DEFINITIONS 

ESSAYS   IN  CONTEMPORARY  CRITICISM 


BY 

HENRY  SEIDEL  CANBY,  Ph.D. 

Editor  of  The  Literary  Review  of  The  New  York  Evening  Post, 
and  a  member  of  the  English  Department  of  Yale  University 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,    1922,    BY 
HARCOURT,    BRACK    AND   COMPANY,    INC. 


PRINTED    IN    THE    U.  S.    A.   BY 

THE    QUINN    &    BODEN    COMPANY 

RAHWAY      N      J 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

THE  author  wishes  to  acknowledge  the  courtesy  of 
The  Atlantic  Monthly,  Harper's  Magazine,  The  Cen 
tury  Magazine,  The  Literary  Review  of  The  New 
York  Evening  Post,  The  Bookman,  The  Nation,  and 
The  North  American  Review  for  permission  to  reprint 
such  of  these  essays  as  have  appeared  in  their  columns. 


504  i> 


PREFACE 

THE  unity  of  this  book  is  to  be  sought  in  the  point 
of  view  of  the  writer  rather  than  in  a  sequence  of 
chapters  developing  a  single  theme  and  arriving  at 
categorical  conclusions.  Literature  in  a  civilization 
like  ours,  which  is  trying  to  be  both  sophisticated  and 
democratic  at  the  same  moment  of  time,  has  so  many 
sources  and  so  many  manifestations,  is  so  much  in 
volved  with  our  social  background,  and  is  so  much 
a  question  of  life  as  well  as  of  art,  that  many  doors 
have  to  be  opened  before  one  begins  to  approach  an 
understanding.  The  method  of  informal  definition 
which  I  have  followed  in  all  these  essays  is  an  attempt 
to  open  doors  through  which  both  writer  and  reader 
may  enter  into  a  better  comprehension  of  what  novel 
ists,  poets,  and  critics  have  done  or  are  trying  to  ac 
complish.  More  than  an  entrance  upon  many  a  vexed 
controversy  and  hidden  meaning  I  cannot  expect  to 
have  achieved  in  this  book;  but  where  the  door  would 
not  swing  wide  I  have  at  least  tried  to  put  one  foot 
in  the  crack.  The  sympathetic  reader  may  find  his 
own  way  further;  or  may  be  stirred  by  my  endeavor 
to  a  deeper  appreciation,  interest,  and  insight.  That 
is  my  hope. 

New  York,  April,  1922. 


CONTENTS 

PREFACE 
I.    ON  FICTION 

PAGE 

SENTIMENTAL  AMERICA         .  3 

FREE  FICTION 19 

A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  TOWARD  FICTION  .       .  40 

THE  ESSENCE  OF  POPULARITY 57 

II.   ON  THE  AMERICAN  TRADITION 

THE  AMERICAN  TRADITION 77 

BACK  TO  NATURE 92 

THANKS  TO  THE  ARTISTS 109 

TO-DAY  IN  AMERICAN  LITERATURE:    ADDRESSED   TO 

THE  BRITISH 112 

TIME'S  MIRROR 128 

THE  FAMILY  MAGAZINE 132 

III.   THE  NEW  GENERATION 

THE  YOUNG  ROMANTICS 149 

PURITANS  ALL 164 

THE  OLDER  GENERATION 167 

A  LITERATURE  OF  PROTEST 170 

BARBARIANS  A  LA  MODE 174 

ix 


x  Contents 

IV.    THE  REVIEWING  OF  BOOKS 

PAGE 

A  PROSPECTUS  FOR  CRITICISM      .                      .  .     185 

THE  RACE  OF  REVIEWERS     .  •     X9S 

THE  SINS  OF  REVIEWING      .  .203 

MRS.  WHARTON'S  "THE  AGE  OF  INNOCENCE"  .  .     212 

MR.  HERGESHEIMER'S  "CYTHEREA"     .  .217 

V.    PHILISTINES  AND  DILETTANTE 

POETRY  FOR  THE  UNPOETICAL     .                      .  .227 

EYE,  EAR,  AND  MIND    .  •     243 

OUT  WITH  THE  DILETTANTE        .       .       .  •     246 

FLAT  PROSE     .       .  •     249 

VI.    MEN  AND  THEIR  BOOKS 

CONRAD  AND  MELVILLE         ...               .  .     257 

THE  NOVELIST  OF  PITY       ...  .269 
HENRY  JAMES 

THE  SATIRIC  RAGE  OF  BUTLER    .  .282 

CONCLUSION 
DEFINING  THE  INDEFINABLE 291 


I 

On  Fiction 


Sentimental  America 

THE  Oriental  may  be  inscrutable,  but  he  is  no  more 
puzzling  than  the  average  American.  We  admit  that 
we  are  hard,  keen,  practical,  -the  adjectives  that  every 
casual  European  applies  to  us, — and  yet  any  book 
store  window  or  railway  news-stand  will  show  that  we 
prefer  sentimental  magazines  and  books.  Why  should 
a  hard  race — if  we  are  hard — read  soft  books? 

By  soft  books,  by  sentimental  books,  I  do  not  mean 
only  the  kind  of  literature  best  described  by  the  word 
"squashy."  I  doubt  whether  we  write  or  read  more 
novels  and  short  stories  of  the  tear-dripped  or  hyper- 
emotional  variety  than  other  nations.  Germany  is — 
or  was — full  of  such  soft  stuff.  It  is  highly  popular 
in  France,  although  the  excellent  taste  of  French  criti 
cism  keeps  it  in  check.  Italian  popular  literature  ex 
udes  sentiment;  and  the  sale  of  "squashy"  fiction  in 
England  is  said  to  be  threatened  only  by  an  occasional 
importation  of  an  American  "best-seller."  We  have 
no  bad  eminence  here.  Sentimentalists  with  enlarged 
hearts  are  international  in  habitat,  although,  it  must 
be  admitted,  especially  popular  in  America. 

When  a  critic,  after  a  course  in  American  novels 
and  magazines,  declares  that  life,  as  it  appears  on 
the  printed  page  here,  is  fundamentally  sentimental 
ized,  he  goes  much  deeper  than  "mushiness"  with  his 

3 


On  Fiction 


charge.  He.,mmns,  I  think,  that  there  is  an  alarming 
tendency  in  American  fiction  to  dodge  the  facts  of 
life — or  to  pervert  them.  He  means  that  in  most  pop 
ular  books  only  red-blooded,  optimistic  people  are  wel 
come.  He  means  that  material  success,  physical  sound 
ness,  and  the  gratification  of  the  emotions  have  the 
right  of  way.  He  means  that  men  and  women  (except 
the  comic  figures)  shall  be  presented,  not  as  they  are, 
but  as  we  should  like  to  have  them,  according  to  a 
judgment  tempered  by  nothing  more  searching  than 
our  experience  with  an  unusually  comfortable,  safe,  and 
prosperous  mode  of  living.  Every  one  succeeds  in 
American  plays  and  stories — if  not  by  good  thinking, 
why  then  by  good  looks  or  good  luck.  A  curious  society 
the  research  student  of  a  later  date  might  make  of  it — 
an  upper  world  of  the  colorless  successful,  illustrated 
by  chance-saved  collar  advertisements  and  magazine 
covers;  an  underworld  of  grotesque  scamps,  clowns, 
and  hyphenates  drawn  from  the  comic  supplement;  and 
all — red-blooded  hero  and  modern  gargoyle  alike — 
always  in  good  humor. 

I  am  not  touching  in  this  picture  merely  to  attack 
it.  It  has  been  abundantly  attacked;  what  it  needs 
is  definition.  For  there  is  much  in  this  bourgeois, 
good-humored  American  literature  of  ours  which  rings 
true,  which  is  as  honest  an  expression  of  our  indi 
viduality  as  was  the  more  austere  product  of  ante 
bellum  New  England.  If  American  sentimentality  does 
invite  criticism,  American  sentiment  deserves  defense. 

Sentiment — the  response  of  the  emotions  to  the  ap- 


Sentimental  America  5 

peal  of  human  nature — is  cheap,  but  so  are  many  other 
good  things.  The  best  of  the  ancients  were  rich  in  it. 
Homer's  chieftains  wept  easily.  So  did  Shakespeare's 
heroes.  Adam  and  Eve  shed  "some  natural  tears" 
when  they  left  the  Paradise  which  Milton  imagined 
for  them.  A  heart  accessible  to  pathos,  to  natural 
beauty,  to  religion,  was  a  chief  requisite  for  the  pro 
tagonist  of  Victorian  literature.  Even  Becky  Sharp 
was  touched — once — by  Amelia's  moving  distress. 

Americans,  to  be  sure,  do  not  weep  easily;  but  if  they 
make  equivalent  responses  to  sentiment,  that  should 
not  be  held  against  them.  If  we  like  "sweet"  stories, 
or  "strong" — which  means  emotional — stories,  our 
taste  is  not  thereby  proved  to  be  hopeless,  or  our 
national  character  bad.  It  is  better  to  be  creatures 
of  even  sentimental  sentiment  with  the  author  of 
"The  Rosary,"  than  to  see  the  world  only  as  it  is 
portrayed  by  the  pens  of  Bernard  Shaw  and  Anatole 
France.  The  first  is  deplorable;  the  second  is  danger 
ous.  I  should  deeply  regret  the  day  when  a  simple 
story  of  honest  American  manhood  winning  a  million 
and  a  sparkling,  piquant  sweetheart  lost  all  power  to 
lull  my  critical  faculty  and  warm  my  heart.  I  doubt 
whether  any  literature  has  ever  had  too  much  of  honest 
sentiment. 

Good  Heavens!  Because  some  among  us  insist  that 
the  mystic  rose  of  the  emotions  shall  be  painted  a 
brighter  pink  than  nature  allows,  are  the  rest  to  forego 
glamour?  Or  because,  to  view  the  matter  differently, 
psychology  has  shown  what  happens  in  the  brain  when 


6  On  Fiction 

a  man  falls  in  love,  and  anthropology  has  traced  mar 
riage  to  a  care  for  property  rights,  are  we  to  suspect 
the  idyllic  in  literature  wherever  we  find  it?  Life 
is  full  of  the  idyllic;  and  no  anthropologist  will  ever 
persuade  the  reasonably  romantic  youth  that  the  sweet 
and  chivalrous  passion  which  leads  him  to  mingle  rever 
ence  with  desire  for  the  object  of  his  affections,  is  noth 
ing  but  an  idealized  property  sense.  Origins  explain 
very  little,  after  all.  The  bilious  critics  of  sentiment 
in  literature  have  not  even  honest  science  behind  them. 

I  have  no  quarrel  with  traffickers  in  simple  emotion 
— with  such  writers  as  James  Lane  Allen  and  James 
Whitcomb  Riley,  for  example.  But  the  average  Ameri 
can  is  not  content  with  such  sentiment  as  theirs.  He 
wishes  a  more  intoxicating  brew,  he  desires  to  be  per 
suaded  that,  once  you  step  beyond  your  own  experi 
ence,  feeling  rules  the  world.  He  wishes — I  judge  by 
what  he  reads — to  make  sentiment  at  least  ninety  per 
cent  efficient,  even  if  a  dream-America,  superficially 
resemblant  to  the  real,  but  far  different  in  tone,  must 
be  created  by  the  obedient  writer  in  order  to  satisfy 
him.  His  sentiment  has  frequently  to  be  sentimental 
ized  before  he  will  pay  for  it.  And  to  this  fault,  which 
he  shares  with  other  modern  races,  he  adds  the  other 
heinous  sin  of  sentimentalism,  the  refusal  to  face  the 
facts. 

This  sentimentalizing  of  reality  is  far  more  danger 
ous  than  the  romantic  sentimentalizing  of  the  "squashy'1 
variety.  It  is  to  be  found  in  sex-stories  which  care 
fully  observe  decency  of  word  and  deed,  where  the 


Sentimental  America  7 

conclusion  is  always  in  accord  with  conventional  mo 
rality,  yet  whose  characters  are  clearly  immoral,  inde 
cent,  and  would  so  display  themselves  if  the  tale  were 
truly  told.  It  is  to  be  found  in  stories  of  "big  business" 
where  trickery  and  rascality  are  made  virtuous  at  the 
end  by  sentimental  baptism.  If  I  choose  for  the  hero 
of  my  novel  a  director  in  an  American  trust;  if  I  make 
him  an  accomplice  in  certain  acts  of  ruthless  economic 
tyranny;  if  I  make  it  clear  that  at  first  he  is  merely 
subservient  to  a  stronger  will;  and  that  the  acts  he 
approves  are  in  complete  disaccord  with  his  private 
moral  code — why  then,  if  the  facts  should  be  dragged 
to  the  light,  if  he  is  made  to  realize  the  exact  nature 
of  his  career,  how  can  I  end  my  story?  It  is  evident 
that  my  hero  possesses  little  insight  and  less  firmness 
of  character.  He  is  not  a  hero;  he  is  merely  a  tool. 
In,  let  us  say,  eight  cases  out  of  ten,  his  curve  is  already 
plotted.  It  leads  downward — not  necessarily  along  the 
villain's  path,  but  toward  moral  insignificance. 

And  yet,  I  cannot  end  my  story  that  way  for  Ameri 
cans.  There  must  be  a  grand  moral  revolt.  There 
must  be  resistance,  triumph,  and  not  only  spiritual,  but 
also  financial  recovery.  And  this,  likewise,  is  senti 
mentality.  Even  Booth  Tarkington,  in  his  excellent 
"Turmoil,"  had  to  dodge  the  logical  issue  of  his  story; 
had  to  make  his  hero  exchange  a  practical  literary  ideal 
ism  for  a  very  impractical,  even  though  a  commercial, 
utopianism,  in  order  to  emerge  apparently  successful 
at  the  end  of  the  book.  A  story  such  as  the  Danish 
Nexo's  "Pelle  the  Conqueror,"  where  pathos  and  the 


8  On  Fiction 

idyllic,  each  intense,  each  beautiful,  are  made  convinc 
ing  by  an  undeviating  truth  to  experience,  would  seem 
to  be  almost  impossible  of  production  just  now  in 
America. 

It  is  not  enough  to  rail  at  this  false  fiction.  The 
chief  duty  of  criticism  is  to  explain.  The  best  correc 
tive  of  bad  writing  is  a  knowledge  of  why  it  is  bad. 
We  get  the  fiction  we  deserve,  precisely  as  we  get  the 
government  we  deserve — or  perhaps,  in  each  case,  a 
little  better.  Why  are  we  sentimental?  When  that 
question  is  answered,  it  is  easier  to  understand  the 
defects  and  the  virtues  of  American  fiction.  And  the 
answer  lies  in  the  traditional  American  philosophy  of 
life. 

To  say  that  the  American  is  an  idealist  is  to  commit 
a  thoroughgoing  platitude.  Like  most  platitudes,  the 
statement  is  annoying  because  from  one  point  of  view 
it  is  indisputably  just,  while  from  another  it  does  not 
seem  to  fit  the  facts.  With  regard  to  our  tradition, 
it  is  indisputable.  Of  the  immigrants  who  since  the 
seventeenth  century  have  been  pouring  into  this  conti 
nent  a  proportion  large  in  number,  larger  still  in  influ 
ence,  has  been  possessed  of  motives  which  in  part  at 
least  were  idealistic.  If  it  was  not  the  desire  for  re 
ligious  freedom  that  urged  them,  it  was  the  desire  for 
personal  freedom;  if  not  political  liberty,  why  then 
economic  liberty  (for  this  too  is  idealism),  and  the 
opportunity  to  raise  the  standard  of  life.  And  of 
course  all  these  motives  were  strongest  in  that  earlier 


Sentimental  America  9 

immigration  which  has  done  most  to  fix  the  state  of 
mind  and  body  which  we  call  being  American.  I  need 
not  labor  the  argument.  Our  political  and  social  his 
tory  support  it;  our  best  literature  demonstrates  it,  for 
no  men  have  been  more  idealistic  than  the  American 
writers  whom  we  have  consented  to  call  great.  Emer 
son,  Thoreau,  Hawthorne,  Whitman — was  idealism 
ever  more  thoroughly  incarnate  than  in  them? 

And  this  idealism — to  risk  again  a  platitude — has 
been  in  the  air  of  America.  It  has  permeated  our  re 
ligious  sects,  and  created  several  of  them.  It  has  given 
tone  to  our  thinking,  and  even  more  to  our  feeling.  I  do 
not  say  that  it  has  always,  or  even  usually,  determined 
our  actions,  although  the  Civil  War  is  proof  of  its 
power.  Again  and  again  it  has  gone  aground  roughly 
when  the  ideal  met  a  condition  of  living — a  fact  that 
will  provide  the  explanation  for  which  I  seek.  But 
optimism,  "boosting,"  muck-raking  (not  all  of  its  man 
ifestations  are  pretty),  social  service,  religious,  muni 
cipal,  democratic  reform,  indeed  the  "uplift"  generally, 
is  evidence  of  the  vigor,  the  bumptiousness  of  the  in 
herited  American  tendency  to  pursue  the  ideal.  No  one 
can  doubt  that  in  1918  we  believed,  at  least,  in  idealism. 

Nevertheless,  so  far  as  the  average  individual  is 
concerned,  with  just  his  share  and  no  more  of  the  race- 
tendency,  this  idealism  has  been  suppressed,  and  in 
some  measure  perverted.  It  is  this  which  explains,  I 
think,  American  sentimentalism. 

Consider,  for  example,  the  ethics  of  conventional 
American  society.  The  American  ethical  tradition  is 


IO  On  Fiction 

perfectly  definite  and  tremendously  powerful.  It  be 
longs,  furthermore,  to  a  population  far  larger  than  the 
"old  American''  stock,  for  it  has  been  laboriously  incul 
cated  in  our  schools  and  churches,  and  impressively 
driven  home  by  newspaper,  magazine,  and  book.  I 
shall  not  presume  to  analyze  it  save  where  it  touches 
literature.  There  it  maintains  a  definite  attitude  to 
ward  all  sex-problems :  the  Victorian,  which  is  not  neces 
sarily,  or  even  probably,  a  bad  one.  Man  should  be 
chaste,  and  proud  of  his  chastity.  Woman  must  be  so. 
It  is  the  ethical  duty  of  the  American  to  hate,  or  at 
least  to  despise,  all  deviations,  and  to  pretend — for 
the  greater  prestige  of  the  law — that  such  sinning  is 
exceptional,  at  least  in  America.  And  this  is  the  public 
morality  he  believes  in,  whatever  may  be  his  private 
experience  in  actual  living.  In  business,  it  is  the  ethi 
cal  tradition  of  the  American,  inherited  from  a  rigorous 
Protestant  morality,  to  be  square,  to  play  the  game 
without  trickery,  to  fight  hard  but  never  meanly. 
Over-reaching  is  justifiable  when  the  other  fellow  has 
equal  opportunities  to  be  "smart";  lying,  tyranny— 
never.  And  though  the  opposites  of  all  these  laudable 
practices  come  to  pass,  he  must  frown  on  them  in 
public,  deny  their  Tightness  even  to  the  last  cock-crow 
— especially  in  the  public  press. 

American  political  history  is  a  long  record  of  ideal 
istic  tendencies  toward  democracy  working  painfully 
through  a  net  of  graft,  pettiness,  sectionalism,  and 
bravado,  with  constant  disappointment  for  the  idealist 
who  believes,  traditionally,  in  the  intelligence  of  the 


Sentimental  America  n 

crowd.  American  social  history  is  a  glaring  instance 
of  how  the  theory  of  equal  dignity  for  all  men  can 
entangle  itself  with  caste  distinctions,  snobbery,  and 
the  power  of  wealth.  American  economic  history  be 
trays  the  pioneer  helping  to  kick  down  the  ladder  which 
he  himself  had  raised  toward  equal  opportunity  for  all. 
American  literary  history — especially  contemporary  lit 
erary  history — reflects  the  result  of  all  this  for  the 
American  mind.  The  sentimental  in  our  literature  is 
a  direct  consequence. 

The  disease  is  easily  acquired.  Mr.  Smith,  a  broker, 
finds  himself  in  an  environment  of  "schemes"  and 
"deals"  in  which  the  quality  of  mercy  is  strained,  and 
the  wind  is  decidedly  not  tempered  to  the  shorn  lamb. 
After  all,  business  is  business.  He  shrugs  his  shoulders 
and  takes  his  part.  But  his  unexpended  fund  of  native 
idealism — if,  as  is  most  probable,  he  has  his  share — 
seeks  its  due  satisfaction.  He  cannot  use  it  in  business; 
so  he  takes  it  out  in  a  novel  or  a  play  where,  quite 
contrary  to  his  observed  experience,  ordinary  people 
like  himself  act  nobly,  with  a  success  that  is  all  the 
more  agreeable  for  being  unexpected.  His  wife,  a 
woman  with  strange  stirrings  about  her  heart,  with 
motions  toward  beauty,  and  desires  for  a  significant 
life  and  rich,  satisfying  experience,  exists  in  day-long 
pettiness,  gossips,  frivols,  scolds,  with  money  enough 
to  do  what  she  pleases,  and  nothing  vital  to  do.  She 
also  relieves  her  pent-up  idealism  in  plays  or  books— 
in  high-wrought,  "strong"  novels,  not  in  adventures  in 
society  such  as  the  kitchen  admires,  but  in  stories  with 


12  On  Fiction 

violent  moral  and  emotional  crises,  whose  characters, 
no  matter  how  unlifelike,  have  "strong"  thoughts,  and 
make  vital  decisions;  succeed  or  fail  significantly.  Her 
brother,  the  head  of  a  wholesale  dry-goods  firm,  listens 
to  the  stories  the  drummers  bring  home  of  night  life 
on  the  road,  laughs,  says  to  himself  regretfully  that 
the  world  has  to  be  like  that;  and  then,  in  logical  re 
action,  demands  purity  and  nothing  but  aggressive 
purity  in  the  books  of  the  public  library. 

The  hard  man  goes  in  for  philanthropy  (never  before 
so  frequently  as  in  America) ;  the  one-time  "boss"  takes 
to  picture-collecting;  the  railroad  wrecker  gathers  rare 
editions  of  the  Bible;  and  tens  of  thousands  of  humbler 
Americans  carry  their  inherited  idealism  into  the  neces 
sarily  sordid  experiences  of  life  in  an  imperfectly  or 
ganized  country,  suppress  it  for  fear  of  being  thought 
"cranky"  or  "soft,"  and  then,  in  their  imagination  and 
all  that  feeds  their  imagination,  give  it  vent.  You  may 
watch  the  process  any  evening  at  the  "movies"  or  the 
melodrama,  on  the  trolley-car  or  in  the  easy  chair  at 
home. 

This  philosophy  of  living  which  I  have  called  Ameri 
can  idealism  is  in  its  own  nature  sound,  as  is  proved  in 
a  hundred  directions  where  it  has  had  full  play.  Sup 
pressed  idealism,  like  any  other  suppressed  desire,  be 
comes  unsound.  And  here  lies  the  ultimate  cause  of 
the  taste  for  sentimentalism  in  the  American  bour 
geoisie.  An  undue  insistence  upon  happy  endings,  re 
gardless  of  the  premises  of  the  story,  and  a  craving 


Sentimental  America  13 

for  optimism  everywhere,  anyhow,  are  sure  signs  of  a 
"morbid  complex,"  and  to  be  compared  with  some 
justice  to  the  craving  for  drugs  in  an  alcoholic  deprived 
of  liquor.  No  one  can  doubt  the  effect  of  the  suppres 
sion  by  the  Puritan  discipline  of  that  instinctive  love 
of  pleasure  and  liberal  experience  common  to  us  all. 
Its  unhealthy  reaction  is  visible  in  every  old  American 
community.  No  one  who  faces  the  facts  can  deny  the 
result  of  the  suppression  by  commercial,  bourgeois, 
prosperous  America  of  our  native  idealism.  The  stu 
dent  of  society  may  find  its  dire  effects  in  politics,  in 
religion,  and  in  social  intercourse.  The  critic  cannot 
overlook  them  in  literature;  for  it  is  in  the  realm  of 
the  imagination  that  idealism,  direct  or  perverted,  does 
its  best  or  its  worst. 

Sentiment  is  not  perverted  idealism.  Sentiment  is 
idealism,  of  a  mild  and  not  too  masculine  variety.  If 
it  has  sins,  they  are  sins  of  omission,  not  commission. 
Our  fondness  for  sentiment  proves  that  our  idealism,  if 
a  little  loose  in  the  waist-band  and  puffy  in  the  cheeks, 
is  still  hearty,  still  capable  of  active  mobilization,  like 
those  comfortable  French  husbands  whose  plump  and 
smiling  faces,  careless  of  glory,  careless  of  everything 
but  thrift  and  good  living,  one  used  to  see  figured  on 
a  page  whose  superscription  read,  "Dead  on  the  field 
of  honor." 

The  novels,  the  plays,  the  short  stories,  of  sentiment 
may  prefer  sweetness,  perhaps,  to  truth,  the  feminine 
to  the  masculine  virtues,  but  we  waste  ammunition  in 
attacking  them.  There  never  was,  I  suppose,  a  great 


14  On  Fiction 

literature  of  sentiment,  for  not  even  "The  Sentimental 
Journey"  is  truly  great.  But  no  one  can  make  a  diet 
exclusively  of  "noble"  literature;  the  charming  has  its 
own  cozy  corner  across  from  the  tragic  (and  a  much 
bigger  corner  at  that).  Our  uncounted  amorists  of 
tail-piece  song  and  illustrated  story  provide  the  readiest 
means  of  escape  from  the  somewhat  uninspiring  life 
that  most  men  and  women  are  living  just  now  in 
America. 

The  sentimental,  however, — whether  because  of  an 
excess  of  sentiment  softening  into  "slush,"  or  of  a  mor 
bid  optimism,  or  of  a  weak-eyed  distortion  of  the  facts 
of  life, — is  perverted.  It  needs  to  be  cured,  and  its 
cure  is  more  truth.  But  this  cure,  I  very  much  fear, 
is  not  entirely,  or  even  chiefly,  in  the  power  of  the 
"regular  practitioner,"  the  honest  writer.  jHe  can  be 
I  honest;  but  if  he  is  much  more  honest  than_his_j^aders^ 
{ they  will  not  read  him  As  Professor  Lounsbury  once 
said,  a  language  grows  corrupt  only  when  its  speakers 
grow  corrupt,  and  mends,  strengthens,  and  becomes 
pure  with  them.  So  with  literature.  We  shall  have  less 
sentimentality  in  American  literature  when  our  accumu 
lated  store  of  idealism  disappears  in  a  laxer  generation; 
or  when  it  finds  due  vent  in  a  more  responsible,  less 
narrow,  lessmwioton^  is  lived 

by  the  average  reader  of  fiction  in  America.  I  would 
rather  see  our  literary  taste  damned  forever  than  have 
the  first  alternative  become — as  it  has  not  yet — a  fact. 
The  second,  in  these  years  rests  upon  the  knees  of  the 
gods. 


Sentimental  America  15 

All  this  must  not  be  taken  in  too  absolute  a  sense. 
There  are  medicines,  and  good  ones,  in  the  hands  of 
writers  and  of  critics,  to  abate,  if  not  to  heal,  this 
plague  of  sentimentalism.  I  have  stated  ultimate  causes 
only.  They  are  enough  to  keep  the  mass  of  Americans 
reading  sentimentalized  fiction  until  some  fundamental 
change  has  come,  not  strong  enough  to  hold  back  the 
van  of  American  writing,  which  is  steadily  moving  to 
ward  restraint,  sanity,  and  truth.  Every  honest  com 
position  is  a  step  forward  in  the  cause;  and  every  clear- 
minded  criticism. 

But  one  must  doubt  the  efficacy,  and  one  must  doubt 
the  healthiness,  of  reaction  into  cynicism  and  sophisti 
cated  cleverness.  There  are  curious  signs,  especially 
in  what  we  may  call  the  literature  of  New  York,  of  a 
growing  sophistication  that  sneers  at  sentiment  and  the 
sentimental  alike.  "Magazines  of  cleverness"  have  this 
for  their  keynote,  although  as  yet  the  satire  is  not  al 
ways  well  aimed.  There  are  abundant  signs  that  the 
generation  just  coming  forward  will  rejoice  in  such  a 
pose,  njsjihs^rva^l^jnow  in  the  colleges,  where  the 
youngjiterati  turn  up  t^iyr^(^ej_aijgyeryjhjiig  Ameri- 
can^magazines,  best-sellers,  or  one-hundred-night 
plays, — and  resort  for  inspiration  to  the  English  school 
of  anti-Victorians:  to  Remy  de  Gourmont,  to  Anatole 
France.  Their  pose  is  not  altogether  to  be  blamed,  and 
the  men  to  whom  they  resort  are  models  of  much  that 
is  admirable;  but  there  is  little  promise  for  American 
literature  in  exotic  imitation.  To  see  ourselves  prevail 
ingly  as  others  see  us  may  be  good  for  modesty,  but 


1 6  On  Fiction 

does  not  lead  to  a  self-confident  native  art.  And  it  is 
a  dangerous  way  for  Americans  to  travel.  We  cannot 
afford  such  sophistication  yet.  The  English  wits  experi 
mented  with  cynicism  in  the  court  of  Charles  II, 
laughed  at  blundering  Puritan  morality,  laughed  at 
country  manners,  and  were  whiffed  away  because  the 
ideals  they  laughed  at  were  better  than  their  own. 
Idealism  is  not  funny,  however  censurable  its  excesses. 
As  a  race  we  have  too  much  sentiment  to  be  frightened 
out  of  the  sentimental  by  a  blase  cynicism. 

At  first  glance  the  flood  of  moral  literature  now 
upon  us — social-conscience  stories,  scientific  plays,  plat 
itudinous  "moralities"  that  tell  us  how  to  live — may 
seem  to  be  another  protest  against  sentimentalism.  And 
that  the  French  and  English  examples  have  been  so 
warmly  welcomed  here  may  seem  another  indication 
of  a  reaction  on  our  part.  I  refer  especially  to  "hard" 
stories,  full  of  vengeful  wrath,  full  of  warnings  for 
the  race  that  dodges  the  facts  of  life.  H.  G.  Wells  is 
the  great  exemplar,  with  his  sociological  studies 
wrapped  in  description  and  tied  with  a  plot.  In  a 
sense,  such  stories  are  certainly  to  be  regarded  as  a 
protest  against  truth-dodging,  against  cheap  optimism, 
against  "slacking,"  whether  in  literature  or  in  life. 
But  it  would  be  equally  just  to  call  them  another  re 
sult  of  suppressed  idealism,  and  to  regard  their  popu 
larity  in  America  as  proof  of  the  argument  which  I  have 
advanced  in  this  essay.  Excessively  didactic  literature 
is  often  a  little  unhealthy.  In  fresh  periods,  when  life 
runs  strong  and  both  ideals  and  passions  find  ready 


Sentimental  America  17 

issue  into  life,  literature  has  no  burdensome  moral  to 
carry.  It  digests  its  moral.  Homer  digested  his  morals. 
They  transfuse  his  epics.  So  did  Shakespeare. 

Not  so  with  the  writers  of  the  social-conscience 
school.  They  are  in  a  rage  over  wicked,  wasteful  man. 
Their  novels  are  bursted  notebooks — sometimes  neat 
and  orderly  notebooks,  like  Mr.  Galsworthy's  or  our 
own  Ernest  Poole's,  sometimes  haphazard  ones,  like 
those  of  Mr.  Wells,  but  always  explosive  with  reform. 
These  gentlemen  know  very  well  what  they  are  about, 
especially  Mr.  Wells,  the  lesser  artist,  perhaps,  as  com 
pared  with  Galsworthy,  but  the  shrewder  and  possibly 
the  greater  man.  The  very  sentimentalists,  who  go  to 
novels  to  exercise  the  idealism  which  they  cannot  use 
in  life,  will  read  these  unsentimental  stories,  although 
their  lazy  impulses  would  never  spur  them  on  toward 
any  truth  not  sweetened  by  a  tale. 

And  yet,  one  feels  that  the  social  attack  might  have 
been  more  convincing  if  free  from  its  compulsory  serv 
ice  to  fiction;  that  these  novels  and  plays  might  have 
been  better  literature  if  the  authors  did  not  study 
TTfe  in  order  that  they  might  be  better  able  to  preach. 
Wells  and  Galsworthy  also  have  suffered  from  sup 
pressed  idealism,  although  it  would  be  unfair  to  say 
that  perversion  was  the  result.  So  have  our  muck- 
rakers,  who,  very  characteristically,  exhibit  the  dis 
order  in  a  more  complex  and  a  much  more  serious  form, 
since  to  a  distortion  of  facts  they  have  often  enough 
added  hypocrisy  and  commercialism.  It  is  part  of  the 
price  we  pay  for  being  sentimental. 


1 8  On  Fiction 

If  I  am  correct  in  my  analysis,  we  are  suffering  here 
in  America,  not  from  a  plague  of  bad  taste  merely,  nor 
only  from  a  lack  of  real  education  among  our  myriads 
of  readers,  nor  from  decadence — least  of  all,  this  last. 
It  is  a  disease  of  our  own  particular  virtue  which  has  in 
fected  us — idealism,  suppressed  and  perverted.  A  less 
commercial,  more^responsible.  America,  perhaps  a  less 
prosperous~an3  more  spiritual  America,  will  hold  fast 
to  its  sentiment,  but  be  weaned  from  its  sentimentality. 


Free  Fiction 

WHAT  impresses  me  most  in  the  contemporary  short 
story  as  I  find  it  in  American  magazines,  is  its  curious 
sophistication.  Its  bloom  is  gone.  I  have  read  through 
dozens  of  periodicals  without  finding  one  with  fresh 
feeling  and  the  easy  touch  of  the  writer  who  writes  be 
cause  his  story  urges  him.  And  when  with  relief  I  do 
encounter  a  narrative  that  is  not  conventional  in  struc 
ture  and  mechanical  in  its  effects,  the  name  of  the 
author  is  almost  invariably  that  of  a  newcomer,  or  of 
one  of  our  few  uncorrupted  masters  of  the  art.  Still 
more  remarkable,  the  good  short  stories  that  I  meet 
with  in  my  reading  are  the  trivial  ones, — the  sketchy, 
the  anecdotal,  the  merely  adventurous  or  merely  pic 
turesque;  as  they  mount  toward  literature  they  seem 
to  increase  in  artificiality  and  constraint;  when  they 
propose  to  interpret  life  they  become  machines,  and 
nothing  more,  for  the  discharge  of  sensation,  sentiment, 
or  romance.  And  this  is  true,  so  far  as  I  can  discover, 
of  the  stories  which  most  critics  and  more  editors  be 
lieve  to  be  successful,  the  stories  which  are  most  char 
acteristic  of  magazine  narrative  and  of  the  output  of 
American  fiction  in  our  times. 

I  can  take  my  text  from  any  magazine,  from  the  most 
literary  to  the  least.  In  the  stories  selected  by  all  of 
them  I  find  the  resemblances  greater  than  the  differ- 

19 


2O  On  Fiction 

ences,  and  the  latter  seldom  amount  to  more  than  a 
greater  or  a  less  excellence  of  workmanship  and  style. 
The  "literary"  magazines,  it  is  true,  more  frequently 
surprise  one  by  a  story  told  with  original  and  consum 
mate  art;  but  then  the  "popular"  magazines  balance 
this  merit  by  their  more  frequent  escape  from  mere 
prettiness.  In  both  kinds,  the  majority  of  the  stories 
come  from  the  same  mill,  even  though  the  minds  that 
shape  them  may  differ  in  refinement  and  in  taste.  Their 
range  is  narrow,  and,  what  is  more  damning,  their  art 
seems  constantly  to  verge  upon  artificiality. 

These  made-to-order  stories  (and  this  is  certainly 
not  too  strong  a  term  for  the  majority  of  them)  are  not 
interesting  to  a  critical  reader.  He  sticks  to  the  novel, 
or,  more  frequently,  goes  to  France,  to  Russia,  or  to 
England  for  his  fiction,  as  the  sales-list  of  any  progres 
sive  publisher  will  show.  And  I  do  not  believe  that 
they  are  deeply  interesting  to  an  uncritical  reader.  He 
reads  them  to  pass  the  time;  and,  to  judge  from  the 
magazines  themselves,  gives  his  more  serious  attention 
to  the  "write-ups"  of  politics,  current  events,  new  dis 
coveries,  and  men  in  the  public  eye, — to  reality,  in  other 
words,  written  as  if  it  were  fiction,  and  more  interesting 
than  the  fiction  that  accompanies  it,  because,  in  spite  of 
its  enlivening  garb,  it  is  guaranteed  by  writer  and  editor 
to  be  true.  I  am  not  impressed  by  the  perfervid  letters 
published  by  the  editor  in  praise  of  somebody's  story 
as  a  "soul-cure,"  or  the  greatest  of  the  decade.  They 
were  written,  I  suppose,  but  they  are  not  typical.  They 
do  not  insult  the  intelligence  as  do  the  ridiculous  puffs 


Free  Fiction  21 

which  it  is  now  the  fashion  to  place  like  a  sickly  lime 
light  at  the  head  of  a  story;  but  they  do  not  convince 
me  of  the  story's  success  with  the  public.  Actually, 
men  and  women,  discussing  these  magazines,  seldom 
speak  of  the  stories.  They  have  been  interested, — in 
a  measure.  The  "formula,"  as  I  shall  show  later,  is 
bound  to  get  that  result.  But  they  have  dismissed  the 
characters  and  forgotten  the  plots. 

I  do  not  deny  that  this  supposedly  successful  short 
story  is  easy  to  read.  It  is — fatally  easy.  And  here 
precisely  is  the  trouble.  To  borrow  a  term  from  dra 
matic  criticism,  it  is  "well  made,"  and  that  is  what 
makes  it  so  thin,  so  bloodless,  and  so  unprofitable  to 
remember,  in  spite  of  its  easy  narrative  and  its 
"punch."  Its  success  as  literature,  curiously  enough  for 
a  new  literature  and  a  new  race  like  ours,  is  limited, 
not  by  crudity,  or  inexpressiveness,  but  by  form,  by 
the  very  rigidity  of  its  carefully  perfected  form.  Like 
other  patent  medicines,  it  is  constructed  by  formula. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  construct  an  outline  of  the  "for 
mula"  by  which  thousands  of  current  narratives  are 
being  whipped  into  shape.  Indeed,  by  turning  to  the 
nearest  textbook  on  "Selling  the  Short  Story,"  I  could 
find  one  ready-made.  (There  could  be  no  clearer 
symptom  of  the  disease  I  wish  to  diagnose  than  these 
many  "practical"  textbooks,  with  their  over-emphasis 
upon  technique  and  their  under-estimate  of  all  else 
that  makes  literature.)  The  story  must  begin,  it  ap 
pears,  with  action  or  with  dialogue.  A  mother  packs 


22 


On  Fiction 


her  son's  trunk  while  she  gives  him  unheeded  advice 
mingled  with  questions  about  shirts  and  socks;  a  cor 
rupt  and  infuriated  director  pounds  on  the  mahogany 
table  at  his  board  meeting,  and  curses  the  honest  fool 
(hero  of  the  story)  who  has  got  in  his  way;  or, 
"  'Where  did  Mary  Worden  get  that  curious  gown?'  in 
quired  Mrs.  Van  Deming,  glancing  across  the  sparkling 
glass  and  silver  of  the  hotel  terrace."  Any  one  of  these 
will  serve  as  instance  of  the  break-neck  beginning  which 
Kipling  made  obligatory.  Once  started,  the  narrative 
must  move,  move,  move  furiously,  each  action  and 
every  speech  pointing  directly  toward  the  unknown 
climax.  A  pause  is  a  confession  of  weakness.  This 
Poe  taught  for  a  special  kind  of  story;  and  this  a  later 
generation,  with  a  servility  which  would  have  amazed 
that  sturdy  fighter,  requires  of  all  narrative.  Then 
the  climax,  which  must  neatly,  quickly,  and  definitely 
end  the  action  for  all  time,  either  by  a  solution  you  have 
been  urged  to  hope  for  by  the  wily  author  in  every  pre 
ceding  paragraph,  or  in  a  way  which  is  logically  cor 
rect  but  never,  never  suspected.  O.  Henry  is  respon 
sible  for  the  vogue  of  the  latter  of  these  two  alterna 
tives, — and  the  strain  of  living  up  to  his  inventiveness 
has  been  frightful.  Finally  comes  a  last  suspiration, 
usually  in  the  advertising  pages.  Sometimes  it  is  a 
beautiful  descriptive  sentence  charged  with  sentiment, 
sometimes  a  smart  epigram,  according  to  the  style  of 
story,  or  the  "line"  expected  of  the  author.  Try  this, 
as  the  advertisements  say,  on  your  favorite  magazine. 
This  formula,  with  variations  which  readers  can  sup- 


Free  Fiction  23 

ply  for  themselves  or  draw  from  textbooks  on  the  short 
story,  is  not  a  wholly  bad  method  of  writing  fiction. 
It  is,  I  venture  to  assert,  a  very  good  one, — if  you  de 
sire  merely  effective  story-telling.  It  is  probably  the 
best  way  of  making  the  short  story  a  thoroughly  effi 
cient  tool  for  the  presentation  of  modern  life.  And 
there  lies,  I  believe,  the  whole  trouble.  The  short 
story,  its  course  plotted  and  its  form  prescribed,  has  be 
come  too  efficient.  Now  efficiency  is  all  that  we  ask  of 
a  railroad,  efficiency  is  half  at  least  of  what  we  ask  of 
journalism;  but  efficiency  is  not  the  most,  it  is  perhaps 
the  least,  important  among  the  undoubted  elements  of 
good  literature. 

In  order  to  make  the  short  story  efficient,  the  dia 
logue,  the  setting,  the  plot,  the  character  development, 
have  been  squeezed  and  whittled  and  moulded  until  the 
means  of  telling  the  story  fit  the  ends  of  the  story-telling 
as  neatly  as  hook  fits  eye.  As  one  writer  on  how  to 
manufacture  short  stories  tells  us  in  discussing  charac 
ter  development,  the  aspirant  must— 

"Eliminate  every  trait  or  deed  which  does  not  help 
peculiarly  to  make  the  character's  part  in  the  particular 
story  either  intelligible  or  open  to  such  sympathy  as 
it  merits; 

"Paint  in  only  the  'high  lights/  that  is  ...  never 
qualify  or  elaborate  a  trait  or  episode,  merely  for  the 
sake  of  preserving  the  effect  of  the  character's  full 
reality." 

And  thus  the  story  is  to  be  subdued  to  the  service 
of  the  climax  as  the  body  of  man  to  his  brain. 


24  On  Fiction 

But  what  these  writers  upon  the  short  story  do  not 
tell  us  is  that  efficiency  of  this  order  works  backward 
as  well  as  forward.  If  means  are  to  correspond  with 
ends,  why  then  ends  must  be  adjusted  to  means.  Not 
only  must  the  devices  of  the  story-teller  be  directed 
with  sincerity  toward  the  tremendous  effect  he  wishes 
to  make  with  his  climax  upon  you  and  me,  his  readers; 
but  the  interesting  life  which  it  is  or  should  be  his  pur 
pose  to  write  about  for  our  delectation  must  be  ma- 
noeuvered,  or  must  be  chosen  or  rejected,  not  accord 
ing  to  the  limitation  which  small  space  imposes,  but 
with  its  suitability  to  the  "formula"  in  mind.  In  brief, 
if  we  are  to  have  complete  efficiency,  the  right  kind  of 
life  and  no  other  must  be  put  into  the  short-story  hop 
per.  Nothing  which  cannot  be  told  rapidly  must  be 
dropped  in,  lest  it  clog  the  smoothly  spinning  wheels. 
If  it  is  a  story  of  slowly  developing  incongruity  in  mar 
ried  life,  the  action  must  be  speeded  beyond  proba 
bility,  like  a  film  in  the  moving  pictures,  before  it  is 
ready  to  be  made  into  a  short  story.  If  it  is  a  tale  of 
disillusionment  on  a  prairie  farm,  with  the  world  and 
life  flattening  out  together,  some  sharp  climax  must  be 
provided  nevertheless,  because  that  is  the  only  way  in 
which  to  tell  a  story.  Indeed  it  is  easy  to  see  the  dan 
gers  which  arise  from  sacrificing  truth  to  a  formula 
in  the  interests  of  efficiency. 

This  is  the  limitation  by  form;  the  limitation  by 
subject  is  quite  as  annoying.  American  writers  from 
Poe  down  have  been  fertile  in  plots.  Especially  since 
O.  Henry  took  the  place  of  Kipling  as  a  literary  mas- 


Free  Fiction  2$ 

ter,  ingenuity,  inventiveness,  cleverness  in  its  American 
sense,  have  been  squandered  upon  the  short  story.  But 
plots  do  not  make  variety.  Themes  make  variety. 
Human  nature  regarded  in  its  multitudinous  phases 
makes  variety.  There  are  only  a  few  themes  in  current 
American  short  stories, — the  sentimental  theme  from 
which  breed  ten  thousand  narratives;  the  theme  of  in 
tellectual  analysis  and  of  moral  psychology  favored  by 
the  "literary"  magazines;  the  "big-business"  theme; 
the  theme  of  American  effrontery;  the  social-contrast 
theme;  the  theme  of  successful  crime.  Add  a  few 
more,  and  you  will  have  them  all.  Read  a  hundred  ex 
amples,  and  you  will  see  how  infallibly  the  authors— 
always  excepting  our  few  masters — limit  themselves  to 
conventional  aspects  of  even  these  conventional  themes. 
Reflect,  and  you  will  see  how  the  first — the  theme  of 
sentiment — has  overflowed  its  banks  and  washed  over 
all  the  rest,  so  that,  whatever  else  a  story  may  be,  it 
must  somewhere,  somehow,  make  the  honest  American 
heart  beat  more  softly. 

There  is  an  obvious  cause  for  this  in  the  taste  of  the 
American  public,  which  I  do  not  propose  to  neglect. 
But  here  too  we  are  in  the  grip  of  the  "formula,"  of 
the  idea  that  there  is  only  one  way  to  construct  a  short 
story — a  swift  succession  of  climaxes  rising  precipi 
tously  to  a  giddy  eminence.  For  the  formula  is  rigid, 
not  plastic  as  life  is  plastic.  It  fails  to  grasp  innumer 
able  stories  which  break  the  surface  of  American  life 
day  by  day  and  disappear  uncaught.  Stories  of  quiet 
homely  life,  events  significant  for  themselves  that  never 


26  On  Fiction 

reach  a  burning  climax,  situations  that  end  in  irony,  or 
doubt,  or  aspiration,  it  mars  in  the  telling.  The  method 
which  makes  story-telling  easy,  itself  limits  our  variety. 

Nothing  brings  home  the  artificiality  and  the  narrow 
ness  of  this  American  fiction  so  clearly  as  a  compari 
son,  for  better  and  for  worse,  with  the  Russian  short 
story.  I  have  in  mind  the  works  of  Anton  Tchekoff, 
whose  short  stories  have  now  been  translated  into  excel 
lent  English.  Fresh  from  a  reading  of  these  books,  one 
feels,  it  is  true,  quite  as  inclined  to  criticize  as  to  praise. 
Why  are  the  characters  therein  depicted  so  persistently 
disagreeable,  even  in  the  lighter  stories?  Why  are  the 
women  always  freckled,  the  men  predominantly  red  and 
watery  in  the  eye?  Why  is  the  country  so  flat,  so  foggy, 
so  desolate;  and  why  are  the  peasants  so  lumpish  and 
miserable?  Russia  before  the  Revolution  could  not 
have  been  so  dreary  as  this;  the  prevailing  grimness 
must  be  due  to  some  mental  obfuseation  of  her  writers. 
I  do  not  refer  to  the  gloomy,  powerful  realism  of  the 
stories  of  hopeless  misery.  There,  if  one  criticizes,  it 
must  be  only  the  advisability  of  the  choice  of  such  sub 
jects.  One  does  not  doubt  the  truth  of  the  picture.  I 
mean  the  needless  dinginess  of  much  of  Russian  fiction, 
and  of  many  of  these  powerful  short  stories. 

Nevertheless,  when  one  has  said  his  worst,  and  par 
ticularly  when  he  has  eliminated  the  dingier  stories  of 
the  collection,  he  returns  with  an  admiration,  almost 
passionate,  to  the  truth,  the  variety,  above  all  to  the 
freedom  of  these  stories.  I  do  not  know  Russia  or  the 
Russians,  and  yet  I  am  as  sure  of  the  absolute  truth 


Free  Fiction  27 

of  that  unfortunate  doctor  in  "La  Cigale,"  who  builds 
up  his  heroic  life  of  self-sacrifice  while  his  wife  seeks 
selfishly  elsewhere  for  a  hero,  as  I  am  convinced  of  the 
essential  unreality,  except  in  dialect  and  manners,  of 
the  detectives,  the  "dope-fiends,"  the  hard  business 
men,  the  heroic  boys  and  lovely  girls  that  people  most 
American  short  stories.  As  for  variety, — the  Russian 
does  not  handle  numerous  themes.  He  is  obsessed  with 
the  dreariness  of  life,  and  his  obsession  is  only 
occasionally  lifted;  he  has  no  room  to  wander  widely 
through  human  nature.  And  yet  his  work  gives  an  im 
pression  of  variety  that  the  American  magazine  never 
attains.  He  is  free  to  be  various.  When  the  mood  of 
gloom  is  off  him,  he  experiments  at  will,  and  often  with 
consummate  success.  He  seems  to  be  sublimely  uncon 
scious  that  readers  are  supposed  to  like  only  a  few 
kinds  of  stories;  and  as  unaware  of  the  taboo  upon  re 
ligious  or  reflective  narrative  as  of  the  prohibition  upon 
the  ugly  in  fiction.  As  life  in  any  manifestation  be 
comes  interesting  in  his  eyes,  his  pen  moves  freely.  And 
so  he  makes  life  interesting  in  many  varieties,  even 
when  his  Russian  prepossessions  lead  him  far  away 
from  our  Western  moods. 

Freedom.  That  is  the  word  here,  and  also  in  his 
method  of  telling  these  stories.  No  one  seems  to  have 
said  to  Tchekoff,  "Your  stories  must  move,  move, 
move."  Sometimes,  indeed,  he  pauses  outright,  as  life 
pauses ;  sometimes  he  seems  to  turn  aside,  as  life  turns 
aside  before  its  progress  is  resumed.  No  one  has  ever 
made  clear  to  him  that  every  word  from  the  first  of 


I 


28  On  Fiction 

the  story  must  point  unerringly  toward  the  solution 
and  the  effect  of  the  plot.  His  paragraphs  spring  from 
the  characters  and  the  situation.  They  are  led  on  to 
the  climax  by  the  story  itself.  They  do  not  drag  the 
panting  reader  down  a  rapid  action,  to  fling  him  breath 
less  upon  the  "I  told  you  so"  of  a  conclusion  prepared 
in  advance. 

I  have  in  mind  especially  a  story  of  Tchekoff  s  called 
"The  Night  Before  Easter."  It  is  a  very  interesting 
story;  it  is  a  very  admirable  story,  conveying  in  a  few 
pages  much  of  Russian  spirituality  and  more  of  uni 
versal  human  nature;  but  I  believe  that  all,  or  nearly 
all,  of  our  American  magazines  would  refuse  it;  not  be 
cause  it  lacks  picturesqueness,  or  narrative  suspense,  or 
vivid  characterization — all  of  these  it  has  in  large  meas 
ure.  They  would  reject  it  because  it  does  not  seem  to 
move  rapidly,  or  because  it  lacks  a  vigorous  climax. 
The  Goltva  swollen  in  flood  lies  under  the  Easter  stars. 
As  the  monk  Jerome  ferries  the  traveler  over  to  where 
fire  and  cannon-shot  and  rocket  announce  the  rising  of 
Christ  to  the  riotous  monastery,  he  asks,  "Can  you  tell 
me,  kind  master,  why  it  is  that  even  in  the  presence  of 
great  happiness  a  man  cannot  forget  his  grief?"  Dea 
con  Nicholas  is  dead,  who  alone  in  the  monastery  could 
write  prayers  that  touched  the  heart.  And  of  them  all, 
only  Jerome  read  his  "akaphists."  "He  used  to  open 
the  door  of  his  cell  and  make  me  sit  by  him,  and  we 
used  to  read.  .  .  .  His  face  was  compassionate  and 
tender — "  In  the  monastery  the  countryside  is  crowd 
ing  to  hear  the  Easter  service.  The  choir  sings  "Lift 


Free  Fiction  29 

up  thine  eyes,  O  Zion,  and  behold."  But  Nicholas  is 
dead,  and  there  is  none  to  penetrate  the  meaning  of  the 
Easter  canon,  except  Jerome  who  toils  all  night  on  the 
ferry  because  they  had  forgotten  him.  In  the  morning, 
the  traveler  recrosses  the  Goltva.  Jerome  is  still  on  the 
ferry.  He  rests  his  dim,  timid  eyes  upon  them  all,  and 
then  fixes  his  gaze  on  the  rosy  face  of  a  merchant's  wife. 
There  is  little  of  the  man  in  that  long  gaze.  He  is  seek 
ing  in  the  woman's  face  the  sweet  and  gentle  features 
of  his  lost  friend. 

The  American  editor  refuses  such  a  story.  There  is 
no  plot  here,  he  says,  and  no  "punch."  He  is  wrong, 
although  an  imperfect  abstract  like  mine  cannot  con 
vict  him.  For  the  narrative  presents  an  unforgettable 
portrait  of  wistful  hero-worship,  set  in  the  dim  mists 
of  a  Russian  river  against  the  barbaric  splendor  of  an 
Easter  midnight  mass.  To  force  a  climax  upon  this 
poignant  story  would  be  to  spoil  it.  And  when  it  ap 
pears,  as  it  will,  in  reprint,  in  some  periodical  anthology 
of  current  fiction,  it  will  not  fail  to  impress  American 
readers. 

But  the  American  editor  must  have  a  climax  which 
drives  home  what  he  thinks  the  public  wants.  If  it  is 
not  true,  so  much  the  worse  for  truth.  If  it  falsifies 
the  story,  well,  a  lying  story  with  a  "punch"  is  better 
than  a  true  one  that  lacks  a  fire-spitting  climax.  The 
audience  which  judge  a  play  by  the  effect  of  its  "cur 
tain,"  will  not  complain  of  a  trifling  illogicality  in  nar 
rative,  or  a  little  juggling  with  what  might  happen  if 
the  story  were  life.  Of  what  the  editor  wants  I  find  a 


30  On  Fiction 

typical  example  in  a  recent  number  of  a  popular  maga 
zine.  The  story  is  well  written;  it  is  interesting  until 
it  begins  to  lie;  moreover  it  is  "featured"  as  one  of  the 
best  short  stories  of  the  year.  An  American  girl, 
brought  up  in  luxury,  has  fed  her  heart  with  romantic 
sentiment.  The  world  is  a  Christmas  tree.  If  you  are 
good  and  pretty  and  "nice,"  you  have  only  to  wait 
until  you  get  big  enough  to  shake  it,  and  then  down  will 
come  some  present — respect  from  one's  friends  and 
family,  perhaps  a  lover.  And  then  she  wakes  up.  Her 
father  points  out  that  she  is  pinching  him  by  her  ex 
travagance.  Nobody  seems  to  want  her  kind  of  "nice- 
ness";  which  indeed  does  no  one  much  good.  There  is 
nothing  that  she  can  do  that  is  useful  in  the  world,  for 
she  has  never  learned.  She  begins  to  doubt  the 
Christmas  tree.  There  enters  a  man — a  young  electri 
cal  engineer,  highly  trained,  highly  ambitious,  but 
caught  in  the  wheels  of  a  great  corporation  where  he  is 
merely  a  cog;  wanting  to  live,  wanting  to  love,  wanting 
to  be  married,  yet  condemned  to  labor  for  many  years 
more  upon  a  salary  which  perhaps  would  little  more 
than  pay  for  her  clothes.  By  an  ingenious  device  they 
are  thrown  together  in  a  bit  of  wild  country  near  town, 
and  are  made  to  exchange  confidences.  So  far,  no  one 
can  complain  of  the  truth  of  this  story;  and  further 
more  it  is  well  told.  Here  are  two  products  of  our  so 
cial  machine,  both  true  to  type.  Suppose  they  want 
to  marry?  What  can  we  do  about  it?  The  story-teller 
has  posed  his  question  with  a  force  not  to  be  denied. 


Free  Fiction  31 

But  I  wish  we  had  had  a  Tchekoff  to  answer  it.  As 
for  this  author,  he  leads  his  characters  to  a  conveniently 
deserted  house,  lights  a  fire  on  the  hearth,  sets  water 
boiling  for  tea,  and  in  a  few  pages  of  charming  romance 
would  persuade  us  that  with  a  few  economies  in  this 
rural  residence,  true  love  may  have  its  course  and  a 
successful  marriage  crown  the  morning's  adventure. 
Thus  in  one  dazzling  sweep,  the  greatest  and  most 
sugary  plum  of  all  drops  from  the  very  tip  of  the 
Christmas  tree  into  the  lap  of  the  lady,  who  had  just 
learned  that  happiness  in  the  real  world  comes  in  no 
such  haphazard  and  undeserved  a  fashion.  Really! 
have  we  degenerated  from  Lincoln's  day?  Is  it  easy 
now  to  fool  all  of  us  all  of  the  time,  so  that  a  tale-teller 
dares  to  expose  silly  romance  at  the  beginning  of  his 
story,  and  yet  dose  us  with  it  at  the  end?  Not  that 
one  objects  to  romance.  It  is  as  necessary  as  food,  and 
almost  as  valuable.  But  romance  that  pretends  to  be 
realism,  realism  that  fizzles  out  into  sentimental  ro 
mance — is  there  any  excuse  for  that?  Even  if  it  pro 
vides  "heart  interest"  and  an  effective  climax? 

The  truth  is,  of  course,  that  the  Russian  stories  are 
based  upon  life;  the  typical  stories  of  the  American 
magazines,  for  all  their  realistic  details,  are  too  often 
studied,  not  from  American  life  but  from  literary  con 
vention.  Even  when  their  substance  is  fresh,  their  un- 
foldings  and  above  all  their  solutions  are  second-hand. 
If  the  Russian  authors  could  write  American  stories  I 
believe  that  their  work  would  be  more  truly  popular 
than  what  we  are  now  getting.  They  would  be  free  to 


32  On  Fiction 

be  interesting  in  any  direction  and  by  any  method.    The 
writer  of  the  American  short  story  is  not  free. 

I  should  like  to  leave  the  subject  here  with  a  com 
parison  that  any  reader  can  make  for  himself.  But 
American  pride  recalls  the  past  glory  of  our  short 
story,  and  common  knowledge  indicates  the  present 
reality  of  a  few  authors — several  of  them  women — who 
are  writing  fiction  of  which  any  race  might  be  proud. 
The  optimist  cannot  resist  meditating  on  the  way  out 
for  our  enslaved  short  story. 

The  ultimate  responsibility  for  its  present  position 
must  fall,  I  suppose,  upon  our  American  taste,  which, 
when  taken  by  and  large,  is  unquestionably  crude, 
easily  satisfied,  and  not  sensitive  to  good  things.  Ameri 
can  taste  does  not  rebel  against  the  "formula."  If  in 
terest  is  pricked  it  does  not  inquire  too  curiously  into 
the  nature  of  the  goad.  American  taste  is  partial  to 
sentiment,  and  antagonistic  to  themes  that  fail  to  pre 
sent  the  American  in  the  light  of  optimistic  romance. 
But  our  defects  in  taste  are  slowly  but  certainly  being 
remedied.  The  schools  are  at  work  upon  them; 
journalism,  for  all  its  noisy  vulgarity,  is  at  work  upon 
them.  Our  taste  in  art,  our  taste  in  poetry,  our  taste 
in  architecture,  our  taste  in  music  go  up,  as  our  taste 
in  magazine  fiction  seems  to  go  down. 

But  what  are  the  writers  of  short  stories  and  what 
are  the  editors  and  publishers  doing  to  help  taste  im 
prove  itself  until,  as  Henry  James  says,  it  acquires  a 
keener  relish  than  ever  before? 


Free  Fiction  33 

It  profits  nothing  to  attack  the  American  writer. 
He  does,  it  may  fairly  be  assumed,  what  he  can,  and  I 
do  not  wish  to  discuss  here  the  responsibility  of  the 
public  for  his  deficiencies.  The  editor  and  the  pub 
lisher,  however,  stand  in  a  somewhat  different  relation 
ship  to  the  American  short  story.  They  may  assert 
with  much  justice  that  they  are  public  servants  merely; 
nevertheless  they  do  control  the  organs  of  literary  ex 
pression,  and  it  is  through  them  that  any  positive  in 
fluence  on  the  side  of  restriction  or  proscription  must 
be  exerted,  whatever  may  be  its  ultimate  source.  If  a 
lack  of  freedom  in  method  and  in  choice  of  subject  is 
one  reason  for  the  sophistication  of  our  short  story, 
then  the  editorial  policy  of  American  magazines  is  a 
legitimate  field  for  speculation. 

I  can  reason  only  from  the  evidence  of  the  product 
and  the  testimony  of  authors,  successful  and  unsuccess 
ful.  Yet  one  conclusion  springs  to  the  eye,  and  is 
enough  in  itself  to  justify  investigation.  The  critical 
basis  upon  which  the  American  editor  professes  to 
build  his  magazine  is  of  doubtful  validity.  I  believe 
that  it  is  unsound.  His  policy,  as  stated  in  "editorial 
announcements"  and  confirmed  by  his  advertisements 
of  the  material  he  selects,  is  first  to  find  out  what  the 
public  wants,  and  next  to  supply  it.  This  is  reason 
able  in  appearance.  It  would  seem  to  be  good  com 
mercially,  and,  as  a  policy,  I  should  consider  it  good 
for  art,  which  must  consult  the  popular  taste  or  lose  its 
vitality.  But  a  pitfall  lies  between  this  theory  of  edi 
torial  selection  and  its  successful  practice.  The  editor 


34  On  Fiction 

must  really  know  what  the  public  wants.  If  he  does 
not,  he  becomes  a  dogmatic  critic  of  a  very  dangerous 
school. 

Those  who  know  the  theater  and  its  playwrights, 
are  agreed  that  the  dramatic  manager,  at  least  in 
America,  is  a  very  poor  judge  of  what  the  public  de 
sires.  The  percentage  of  bad  guesses  in  every  metro 
politan  season  is  said  to  be  very  high.  Is  the  editor 
more  competent?  It  would  seem  that  he  is,  to  judge 
from  the  stability  of  our  popular  magazines.  But  that 
he  follows  the  public  taste  with  any  certainty  of  judg 
ment  is  rendered  unlikely,  not  only  by  inherent  improb 
ability,  but  also  by  three  specific  facts:  the  tiresome 
succession  of  like  stories  which  follow  unendingly  in 
the  wake  of  every  popular  success;  the  palpable  fear 
of  the  editor  to  attempt  innovation,  experiment,  or 
leadership;  and  the  general  complaint  against  "maga 
zine  stories."  In  truth,  the  American  editor  plays  safe, 
constantly  and  from  conviction;  and  playing  safe  in 
the  short  story  means  the  adoption  of  the  "formula," 
which  is  sure  to  be  somewhat  successful;  it  means  re 
striction  to  a  few  safe  themes.  He  swings  from  the 
detective  story  to  the  tale  of  the  alien,  from  the  "heart- 
interest"  story  to  the  narrative  of  "big  business." 
When,  as  has  happened  recently,  a  magazine  experi 
mented  with  eroticism,  and  found  it  successful,  the 
initiative  of  its  editor  was  felt  to  be  worthy  of  general 
remark. 

If  one  reduces  this  imperfect  sketch  of  existing  con 
ditions  to  terms  of  literary  criticism,  the  result  is  in- 


Free  Fiction  35 

teresting.  There  are  two  great  schools  of  criticism: 
the  judicial  and  the  impressionistic.  The  judicial  critic 
— a  Boileau,  a  Matthew  Arnold — bases  his  criticism 
upon  fundamental  principles.  The  impressionistic 
critic  follows  the  now  hackneyed  advice  of  Anatole 
France,  to  let  his  soul  adventure  among  masterpieces, 
and  seeks  the  reaction  for  good  or  bad  of  a  given  work 
upon  his  own  finely  strung  mind.  The  first  group 
must  be  sure  of  the  breadth,  the  soundness,  and  the 
just  application  of  their  principles.  The  second  group 
must  depend  upon  their  own  good  taste. 

The  American  editor  has  flung  aside  as  archaic  the 
fundamental  principles  of  criticism  upon  which  judicial 
critics  have  based  their  opinions.  And  yet  he  has 
chosen  to  be  dogmatic.  He  has  transformed  his  guess 
as  to  what  the  public  wants  into  a  fundamental  prin 
ciple,  and  acted  upon  it  with  the  confidence  of  an  Aris 
totle.  He  asserts  freely  and  frankly  that,  in  his  pri 
vate  capacity,  such  and  such  a  story  pleases  him,  is 
good  (privately  he  is  an  impressionist  and  holds  opin 
ions  far  more  valid  than  his  editorial  judgment,  since 
they  are  founded  upon  taste  and  not  upon  intuition 
merely) ;  but  that  "the  public  will  not  like  it,"  or  "in 
our  rivalry  with  seventy  other  magazines  we  cannot 
afford  to  print  this  excellent  work."  He  is  frequently 
right.  He  is  also  frequently  wrong. 

I  speak  not  from  personal  experience,  since  other 
reasons  in  my  own  case  have  usually,  though  not 
always,  led  me  to  agree  with  the  editor's  verdict,  when 
it  has  been  unfavorable;  but  from  the  broader  testi- 


36  On  Fiction 

mony  of  many  writers,  the  indisputable  evidence  of 
works  thus  rejected  which  have  later  attained  success, 
and  the  failure  of  American  short  fiction  to  impress 
permanently  the  reading  public.  Based  upon  an  in 
tuition  of  the  public  mind,  changing  with  the  wind, — 
always  after,  never  before  it, — such  editorial  judgment, 
indeed,  must  be  of  doubtful  validity;  must  lead  in  many 
instances  to  unwise  and  unprofitable  restrictions  upon 
originality  in  fiction. 

I  am  well  aware  that  it  is  useless  to  consider  current 
American  literature  without  regard  to  the  multitude 
of  readers  who,  being,  like  all  multitude,  mediocre,  de 
mand  the  mediocre  in  literature.  And  I  know  that  it  is 
equally  foolish  to  neglect  the  popular  elements  in  the 
developing  American  genius — that  genius  which  is  so 
colloquial  now,  and  yet  so  inventive;  so  vulgar  some 
times,  and  yet,  when  sophistication  is  not  forced  upon 
it,  so  fresh.  I  have  no  wish  to  evade  the  necessity  for 
consulting  the  wishes  and  the  taste  of  the  public,  which 
good  sense  and  commercial  necessity  alike  impose  upon 
the  editor.  I  would  not  have  the  American  editor  less 
practical,  less  sensitive  to  the  popular  wave;  I  would 
have  him  more  so.  But  I  would  have  him  less  dog 
matic.  All  forms  of  dogmatism  are  dangerous  for  men 
whose  business  it  is  to  publish,  not  to  criticize,  con 
temporary  literature.  But  an  unsound  and  arbitrary 
dogmatism  is  the  worst.  If  the  editor  is  to  give  the 
people  what  they  want  instead  of  what  they  have 
wanted,  he  must  have  more  confidence  in  himself,  and 
more  belief  in  their  capacity  for  liking  the  good.  He 


Free  Fiction  37 

should  be  dogmatic  only  where  he  can  be  sure.  Else 
where  let  him  follow  the  method  of  science,  and  experi 
ment.  He  should  trust  to  his  taste  in  practice  as  well 
as  in  private  theory,  and  let  the  results  of  such  criti 
cism  sometimes,  at  least,  dominate  his  choice. 

In  both  our  "popular"  and  our  "literary"  magazines, 
freer  fiction  would  follow  upon  better  criticism.  The 
readers  of  the  "literary"  magazines  are  already  seek 
ing  foreign-made  narratives,  and  neglecting  the  Ameri 
can  short  story  built  for  them  according  to  the  stand 
ardized  model.  The  readers  of  the  "popular"  maga 
zines  want  chiefly  journalism  (an  utterly  different 
thing  from  literature);  and  that  they  are  getting  in 
good  measure  in  the  non-fiction  and  part-fiction  sec 
tions  of  the  magazines.  But  they  also  seek,  as  all  men 
seek,  some  literature.  If,  instead  of  imposing  the 
"formula"  (which  is,  after  all,  a  journalistic  mech 
anism — and  a  good  one — adapted  for  speedy  and 
evanescent  effects),  if,  instead  of  imposing  the  "for 
mula"  upon  all  the  subjects  they  propose  to  have  turned 
into  fiction,  the  editors  of  these  magazines  should  also 
experiment,  should  release  some  subjects  from  the 
tyranny  of  the  "formula,"  and  admit  others  which  its 
cult  has  kept  out,  the  result  might  be  surprising.  It 
is  true  that  the  masses  have  no  taste  for  literature, — 
as  a  steady  diet;  it  is  still  more  certain  that  not  even 
the  most  mediocre  of  multitudes  can  be  permanently 
hoodwinked  by  formula. 

But  the  magazines  can  take  care  of  themselves;  it  is 
the  short  story  in  which  I  am  chiefly  interested.  Bet- 


38  On  Fiction 

ter  criticism  and  greater  freedom  for  fiction  might 
vitalize  our  overabundant,  unoriginal,  unreal,  unversa- 
tile, — everything  but  unformed  short  story.  Its  artifice 
might  again  become  art.  Even  the  more  careful,  the 
more  artistic  work  leaves  one  with  the  impression  that 
these  stories  have  sought  a  "line,"  and  found  an  ac 
ceptable  formula.  And  when  one  thinks  of  the  multi 
tudinous  situations,  impressions,  incidents  in  this  fas 
cinating  whirl  of  modern  life,  incapable  perhaps  of 
presentation  in  a  novel  because  of  their  very  imperma- 
nence,  admirably  adapted  to  the  short  story  because  of 
their  vividness  and  their  deep  if  narrow  significance, 
the  voice  of  protest  must  go  up  against  any  artificial, 
arbitrary  limitations  upon  the  art.  Freedom  to  make 
his  appeal  to  the  public  with  any  subject  not  morbid 
or  indecent,  is  all  the  writer  can  ask.  Freedom  to  pub 
lish  sometimes  what  the  editor  likes  and  the  public 
may  like,  instead  of  what  the  editor  approves  because 
the  public  has  liked  it,  is  all  that  he  needs.  There  is 
plenty  of  blood  in  the  American  short  story  yet,  though 
I  have  read  through  whole  magazines  without  finding 
a  drop  of  it. 

When  we  give  literature  in  America  the  same  oppor 
tunity  to  invent,  to  experiment,  that  we  have  already 
given  journalism,  there  will  be  more  legitimate  suc 
cessors  to  Irving,  to  Hawthorne,  to  Poe  and  Bret  Harte. 
There  will  be  more  writers,  like  O.  Henry,  who  write 
stories  to  please  themselves,  and  thus  please  the  ma 
jority.  There  will  be  fewer  writers,  like  O.  Henry, 
who  stop  short  of  the  final  touch  of  perfection  because 


Free  Fiction  39 

American  taste  (and  the  American  editor)  puts  no 
premium  upon  artistic  work.  There  will  be  fewer 
stories,  I  trust,  where  sentiment  is  no  longer  a  part,  but 
the  whole  of  life.  Most  of  all,  form,  the  form,  the 
formula,  will  relax  its  grip  upon  the  short  story,  will 
cease  its  endless  tapping  upon  the  door  of  interest,  and 
its  smug  content  when  some  underling  (while  the  brain 
sleeps)  answers  its  stereotyped  appeal.  And  we  may 
get  more  narratives  like  Mrs.  Whar ton's  "Ethan 
Frome,"  to  make  us  feel  that  now  as  much  as  ever  there 
is  literary  genius  waiting  in  America. 


A  Certain  Condescension  Toward 
Fiction 

IF  only  the  reader  of  novels  would  say  what  he  thinks 
about  fiction!  If  only  the  dead  hand  of  hereditary 
opinion  did  not  grasp  and  distort  what  he  feels!  But 
he  exercises  a  judgment  that  is  not  independent. 
Books,  like  persons,  he  estimates  as  much  by  the  tra 
ditional  reputation  of  the  families  they  happen  to  be 
born  in  as  by  the  merits  they  may  themselves  possess, 
and  the  traditional  reputation  of  the  novel  in  English 
has  been  bad. 

Poetry  has  a  most  respectable  tradition.  Even  now, 
when  the  realistic  capering  of  free  verse  has  embold 
ened  the  ordinary  man  to  speak  his  mind  freely,  a  re 
viewer  hesitates  to  apply  even  to  bad  poetry  so  undigni 
fied  a  word  as  trash.  The  essay  family  is  equally  re 
spectable,  to  be  noticed,  when  noticed  at  all,  with  some 
of  the  reverence  due  to  an  ancient  and  dignified  art. 
The  sermon  family,  still  numerous  to  a  degree  incredi 
ble  to  those  who  do  not  study  the  lists  of  new  books, 
is  so  eminently  respectable  that  few  dare  to  abuse  even 
its  most  futile  members.  But  the  novel  was  given  a 
bad  name  in  its  youth  that  has  overshadowed  its  suc 
cessful  maturity. 

Our  ancestors  are  much  to  blame.  For  centuries 
they  held  the  novel  suspect  as  a  kind  of  bastard  litera- 

40 


A  Certain  Condescension  41 

ture,  probably  immoral,  and  certainly  dangerous  to  in 
tellectual  health.  But  they  are  no  more  deeply  respon 
sible  for  our  suppressed  contempt  of  fiction  than  weak- 
kneed  novelists  who  for  many  generations  have  striven 
to  persuade  the  English  reader  that  a  good  story  was 
really  a  sermon,  or  a  lecture  on  ethics,  or  a  tract  on 
economics  or  moral  psychology,  in  disguise.  Bernard 
Shaw,  in  his  prefaces  to  the  fiction  that  he  succeeds  in 
making  dramatic,  is  carrying  on  a  tradition  that 
Chaucer  practised  before  him: 

And  ye  that  holden  this  tale  a  folye, — 
As  of  a  fox,  or  of  a  cok  and  hen, — 
Taketh  the  moralite,  good  men. 

And  that  was  the  way  they  went  at  it  for  centuries, 
always  pretending,  always  driven  to  pretend,  that  a 
good  story  was  not  good  enough  to  be  worth  telling  for 
itself  alone,  but  must  convey  a  moral  or  a  satire  or  an 
awful  lesson,  or  anything  that  might  separate  it  from 
the  "just  fiction"  that  only  the  immoral  and  the  frivo 
lous  among  their  contemporaries  read  or  wrote.  To 
day  we  pay  the  price. 

William  Painter,  her  Majesty  Queen  Elizabeth's 
clerk  of  ordnance  in  the  Tower,  is  an  excellent  instance. 
Stricken  by  a  moral  panic,  he  advertised  that  from  his 
delectable  "Palace  of  Pleasure"  the  young  might 
"learne  how  to  avoyde  the  ruine,  overthrow,  inconven 
ience  and  displeasure,  that  lascivious  desire  and  wanton 
evil  doth  bring  to  their  suters  and  pursuers" — a  disin 
genuous  sop  to  the  Puritans.  His  contemporary, 


42  On  Fiction 

Geoffrey  Fenton,  who  also  turned  to  story-making, 
opines  that  in  histories  "the  dignitye  of  vertue  and 
fowelenes  of  vice  appereth  muche  more  lyvelye  then 
in  any  morall  teachynge,"  although  he  knew  that  his 
"histories"  were  the  sheerest,  if  not  the  purest,  of  fic 
tion,  with  any  moral  purpose  that  might  exist  chiefly 
of  his  own  creating.  A  century  and  more  later  Eliza 
Haywood,  the  ambiguous  author  of  many  ambiguous 
novels  of  the  eighteenth  century,  prefaces  her  "Life's 
Progress  Through  the  Passions"  (an  ambiguous  title) 
with  like  hypocrisy:  "I  am  enemy  to  all  romances, 
novels,  and  whatever  carries  the  air  of  them.  ...  It 
is  a  real,  not  a  fictitious  character  I  am  about  to  pre 
sent" — which  is  merely  another  instance  of  fiction  dis 
guising  itself,  this  time,  I  regret  to  say,  as  immorality 
in  real  life.  And  so  they  all  gor  forever  implying  that 
fiction  is  frivolous  or  immoral  or  worthless,  until  it  is 
not  surprising  that,  as  Mr.  Bradsher  has  reminded  us, 
the  elder  Timothy  Dwight  of  Yale  College  was  able  to 
assert,  "Between  the  Bible  and  novels  there  is  a  gulf 
fixed  which  few  novel-readers  are  willing  to  pass." 
Richardson  was  forced  to  defend  himself,  so  was  Sterne, 
so  was  Fielding,  so  was  Goldsmith.  Dr.  Johnson  was 
evidently  making  concessions  when  he  advised  ro 
mances  as  reading  for  youth.  Jeffrey,  the  critic  and 
tyrant  of  the  next  century,  summed  it  all  up  when  he 
wrote  that  novels  are  "generally  regarded  as  among  the 
lower  productions  of  our  literature."  And  this  is  the 
reputation  that  the  novel  family  has  brought  with  it 
even  down  to  our  day. 


A  Certain  Condescension  43 

The  nineteenth  century  was  worse,  if  anything,  than 
earlier  periods,  for  it  furthered  what  might  be  called 
the  evangelistic  slant  toward  novel-reading,  the  attitude 
that  neatly  classified  this  form  of  self-indulgence  with 
dancing,  card-playing,  hard  drinking,  and  loose  living 
of  every  description.  It  is  true  that  the  intellectuals 
and  worldly  folk  in  general  did  not  share  this  prejudice. 
Walter  Scott  had  made  novel-reading  common  among 
the  well-read;  but  the  narrower  sectarians  in  England, 
the  people  of  the  back  country  and  the  small  towns  in 
America,  learned  to  regard  the  novel  as  unprofitable, 
if  not  positively  leading  toward  ungodliness,  and  their 
unnumbered  descendants  make  up  the  vast  army  of 
uncritical  readers  for  which  Grub  Street  strives  and 
sweats  to-day.  They  no  longer  abstain  and  condemn; 
instead,  they  patronize  and  distrust. 

All  this — and  far  more,  for  I  have  merely  sketched 
in  a  long  and  painful  history — is  the  background  sel 
dom  remembered  when  we  wonder  at  the  easy  conde 
scension  of  the  American  toward  his  innumerable 
novels. 

The  fact  of  his  condescension  is  not  so  well  recog 
nized  as  it  deserves  to  be.  Indeed,  condescension  may 
not  seem  to  be  an  appropriate  term  for  the  passionate 
devouring  of  romance  that  one  can  see  going  on  any 
day  in  the  trolley-cars,  or  the  tense  seriousness  with 
which  some  readers  regard  certain  novelists  whose 
pages  have  a  message  for  the  world.  True,  the  term 
will  not  stretch  thus  far.  But  it  is  condescension  that 
has  made  the  trouble,  as  I  shall  try  to  prove;  for  all 


44  On  Fiction 

of  us,  even  the  tense  ones,  do  patronize  that  creative 
instinct  playing  upon  life  as  it  is  which  in  all  times 
and  everywhere  is  the  very  essence  of  fiction. 

How  absurd  that  here  in  America  we  should  conde 
scend  toward  our  fiction !  How  ridiculous  in  a  country 
even  yet  so  weak  and  poor  and  crude  in  the  arts,  which 
has  contributed  so  little  to  the  world's  store  of  all  that 
makes  fine  living  for  the  mind!  What  a  laughable 
parallel  of  the  cock  and  the  gem  he  found  and  left 
upon  the  dung-heap,  if  we  could  be  proved  not  to  be 
proud  of  American  fiction!  For  if  the  novel  and  the 
short  story  should  be  left  out  of  America's  slender  con 
tribution  to  world  literature,  the  offering  would  be  a 
small  one.  Some  poetry  of  Whitman's  and  of  Poe's, 
some  essays  of  Emerson,  a  little  Thoreau,  and  what 
important  besides?  Hawthorne  would  be  left  from  the 
count,  the  best  exemplar  of  the  fine  art  of  moral  narra 
tive  in  any  language;  Henry  James  would  be  left  out, 
the  master  of  them  all  in  psychological  character  analy 
sis;  Poe  the  story-teller  would  be  missing,  and  the  art 
of  the  modern  short  story,  which  in  English  stems  from 
him;  Cooper  would  be  lost  from  our  accounting,  for 
all  his  crudities  the  best  historical  novelist  after  Scott; 
Mark  Twain,  Howells,  Bret  Harte,  Irving!  The  at 
tempt  to  exalt  American  literature  is  grateful  if  one 
begins  upon  fiction. 

And  how  absurd  to  patronize,  to  treat  with  indiffer 
ent  superiority  just  because  they  are  members  of  the 
novel  family,  books  such  as  these  men  have  left  us, 
books  such  as  both  men  and  women  are  writing  in 


A  Certain   Condescension  45 

America  to-day !  Is  there  finer  workmanship  in  Ameri 
can  painting  or  American  music  or  American  architec 
ture  than  can  be  found  in  American  novels  by  the 
reader  willing  to  search  and  discriminate?  A  con 
temporary  poet  confessed  that  he  would  have  rather 
written  a  certain  sonnet  (which  accompanied  the  con 
fession)  than  have  built  Brooklyn  Bridge.  One  may 
doubt  the  special  case,  yet  uphold  the  principle.  Be 
cause  a  novel  is  meant  to  give  pleasure,  because  it  deals 
with  imagination  rather  than  with  facts  and  appeals  to 
the  generality  rather  than  to  the  merely  literary  man 
or  the  specialist,  because,  in  short,  a  novel  is  a  novel, 
and  a  modern  American  novel,  is  no  excuse  for  prig 
gish  reserves  in  our  praise  or  blame.  If  there  is  any 
thing  worth  criticizing  in  contemporary  American 
literature  it  is  our  fiction. 

Absurd  as  it  may  seem  in  theory,  we  have  patronized 
and  do  patronize  our  novels,  even  the  best  of  them, 
following  too  surely,  though  with  a  bias  of  our  own, 
the  Anglo-Saxon  prejudice  traditional  to  the  race.  And 
if  the  curious  frame  of  mind  that  many  reserve  for 
fiction  be  analyzed  and  blame  distributed,  there  will 
be  a  multitude  of  readers,  learned  and  unlearned,  proud 
and  humble,  critical  and  uncritical,  who  must  admit 
their  share.  Nevertheless,  the  righteous  wrath  inspired 
by  the  situation  shall  not  draw  us  into  that  dangerous 
and  humorless  thing,  a  general  indictment.  There  are 
readers  aplenty  who,  to  quote  Painter  once  more,  find 
their  novels  "pleasant  to  avoyde  the  griefe  of  a  Win 
ters  night  and  length  of  Sommers  day,"  and  are  duly 


46  On  Fiction 

appreciative  of  that  service.  With  such  honest,  if  un- 
exacting,  readers  I  have  no  quarrel;  nor  with  many 
more  critical  who  respect,  while  they  criticize,  the  art 
of  fiction.  But  with  the  scholars  who  slight  fiction,  the 
critics  who  play  with  it,  the  general  reader  who  likes 
it  contemptuously,  and  the  social  enthusiast  who 
neglects  its  better  for  its  worser  part,  the  issue  is  direct. 
All  are  the  victims  of  hereditary  opinion;  but  some 
should  know  better  than  to  be  thus  beguiled. 

The  Brahman  among  American  readers  of  fiction  is 
of  course  the  college  professor  of  English.  His  atti 
tude  (I  speak  of  the  type;  there  are  individual  varia 
tions  of  note)  toward  the  novel  is  curious  and  interest 
ing.  It  is  exhibited  perhaps  in  the  title  by  which  such 
courses  in  the  novel  as  the  college  permits  are  usually 
listed.  "Prose  fiction"  seems  to  be  the  favorite  descrip 
tion,  a  label  designed  to  recall  the  existence  of  an  un 
deniably  respectable  fiction  in  verse  that  may  justify 
a  study  of  the  baser  prose.  By  such  means  is  so  dubi 
ous  a  term  as  novel  or  short  story  kept  out  of  the 
college  catalogue! 

Yet  even  more  curious  is  the  academic  attitude 
toward  the  novel  itself.  Whether  the  normal  professor 
reads  many  or  few  is  not  the  question,  nor  even  how 
much  he  enjoys  or  dislikes  them.  It  is  what  he  permits 
himself  to  say  that  is  significant.  Behind  every  assent 
to  excellence  one  feels  a  reservation:  yes,  it  is  good 
enough  for  a  novel!  Behind  every  criticism  of  un 
truth,  of  bad  workmanship,  of  mediocrity  (alas!  so 
often  deserved  in  America!)  is  a  sneering  implication: 


A  Certain   Condescension  47 

but,  after  all,  it  is  only  a  novel.  Not  thus  does  he 
treat  the  stodgy  play  in  stodgier  verse,  the  merits  of 
which,  after  all,  may  amount  to  this,  that  in  appear 
ance  it  is  literary;  not  thus  the  critical  essay  or  in 
vestigation  that  too  often  is  like  the  parasite  whose  sus 
taining  life  comes  from  the  greater  life  on  which  it 
feeds.  In  the  eyes  of  such  a  critic  the  author  of  an 
indifferent  essay  upon  Poe  has  more  distinguished  him 
self  than  if  he  had  written  a  better  than  indifferent  short 
story.  Fiction,  he  feels,  is  the  plaything  of  the  popu 
lace.  The  novel  is  "among  the  lower  productions  of 
our  literature."  It  is  plebeian,  it  is  successful,  it  is 
multitudinous;  the  Greeks  in  their  best  period  did  not 
practise  it  (but  here  he  may  be  wrong) ;  any  one  can 
read  it;  let  us  keep  it  down,  brethren,  while  we  may. 
Many  not  professors  so  phrase  their  inmost  thoughts 
of  fiction  and  the  novel. 

And  in  all  this  the  college  professor  is  profoundly 
justified  by  tradition,  if  not  always  by  common  sense. 
To  him  belongs  that  custody  of  the  classical  in  litera 
ture  which  his  profession  inherited  from  the  monas 
teries,  and  more  remotely  from  the  rhetoricians  of 
Rome.  And  there  is  small  place  for  fiction,  and  none 
at  all  for  the  novel  and  the  short  story  as  we  know  them, 
in  what  has  been  preserved  of  classic  literature.  The 
early  Renaissance,  with  its  Sidney  for  spokesman,  at 
tacked  the  rising  Elizabethan  drama  because  it  was  un- 
classical.  The  later  Renaissance,  by  the  pen  of  Addi- 
son  (who  would  have  made  an  admirable  college  pro 
fessor),  sneered  at  pure  fiction,  directly  and  by  im- 


48  On  Fiction 

plication,  because  it  was  unclassical.  To-day  we  have 
lost  our  veneration  for  Latin  and  Greek  as  languages, 
we  no  longer  deprecate  an  English  work  because  it  hap 
pens  to  be  in  English;  nevertheless  the  tradition  still 
grips  us,  especially  if  we  happen  to  be  Brahmanic. 
Our  college  professors,  and  many  less  excusable,  still 
doubt  the  artistic  validity  of  work  in  a  form  never  dig 
nified  by  the  practice  of  the  ancients,  never  hallowed, 
like  much  of  English  literature  besides,  by  a  long  line 
of  native  productions  adapting  classic  forms  to  new 
ages  and  a  new  speech.  The  epic,  the  lyric,  the  pas 
toral,  the  comedy,  the  tragedy,  the  elegy,  the  satire, 
the  myth,  even  the  fable,  have  been  classic,  have  usually 
been  literature.  But  the  novel  has  never  been  a  pre 
serve  for  the  learned,  although  it  came  perilously  near 
to  that  fate  in  the  days  of  Shakespeare;  has  ever  been 
written  for  cash  or  for  popular  success  rather  than  for 
scholarly  reputation;  has  never  been  studied  for  gram 
mar,  for  style,  for  its  "beauties";  has  since  its  genesis 
spawned  into  millions  that  no  man  can  classify,  and 
produced  a  hundred  thousand  pages  of  mediocrity  for 
one  masterpiece.  All  this  (and  in  addition  prejudices 
unexpressed  and  a  residuum  of  hereditary  bias)  lies 
behind  the  failure  of  most  professors  of  English  to  give 
the  good  modern  novel  its  due.  Their  obstinacy  is  un 
fortunate;  for,  if  they  praised  at  all,  they  would  not, 
like  many  hurried  reviewers,  praise  the  worst  best. 

I  will  not  say  that  more  harm  has  been  done  to  the 
cause  of  the  novel  in  America  by  feeble  reviewing  than 
by  any  other  circumstance,  for  that  would  not  be  true; 


A  Certain  Condescension  49 

bad  reading  has  been  more  responsible  for  the  light 
estimation  in  which  our  novel  is  held.  Nevertheless  it 
is  certain  that  the  ill  effects  of  a  doubtful  literary  repu 
tation  are  more  sadly  displayed  in  current  criticism  of 
the  novel  than  elsewhere.  An  enormous  effusion  of 
writing  about  novels,  especially  in  the  daily  papers, 
most  of  it  casual  and  conventional,  much  of  it  with 
neither  discrimination  nor  constraint,  drowns  the  few 
manful  voices  raised  to  a  pitch  of  honest  concern.  The 
criticism  of  fiction,  taken  by  and  large,  is  not  so  good 
as  the  criticism  of  our  acted  drama,  not  so  good  as  our 
musical  criticism,  not  so  good  as  current  reviewing  of 
poetry  and  of  published  plays. 

Are  reviewers  bewildered  by  the  coveys  of  novels 
that  wing  into  editorial  offices  by  every  mail?  Is  the 
reviewing  of  novels  left  to  the  novice  as  a  mere  rhetori 
cal  exercise  in  which,  a  subject  being  afforded,  he  can 
practise  the  display  of  words?  Or  is  it  because  a  novel 
is  only  a  novel,  only  so  many,  many  novels,  for  which 
the  same  hurried  criticism  must  do,  whether  they  be 
bad  or  mediocre  or  best?  The  reviewing  page  of  the 
standard  newspaper  fills  me  with  unutterable  depres 
sion.  There  seem  to  be  so  many  stories  about  which 
the  same  things  can  be  said.  There  seems  to  be  so 
much  fiction  that  is  "workmanlike,"  that  is  "fascinat 
ing,"  that  "nobly  grasps  contemporary  America,"  that 
will  "become  a  part  of  permanent  literature,"  that 
"lays  bare  the  burning  heart  of  the  race."  Of  course 
the  need  of  the  journalist  to  make  everything  "strong" 
is  behind  much  of  this  mockery;  but  not  all.  Heredi- 


50  On  Fiction 

tary  disrespect  for  fiction  has  more  to  do  with  this  flood 
of  bad  criticism  than  appears  at  first  sight. 

Far  more  depressing,  however,  is  the  rarity  of  real 
criticism  of  the  novel  anywhere.  As  Henry  James,  one 
of  the  few  great  critics  who  have  been  willing  to  take 
the  novel  seriously,  remarked  in  a  now  famous  essay, 
the  most  notable  thing  about  the  modern  novel  in  Eng 
lish  is  its  appearance  of  never  having  been  criticized 
at  all.  A  paragraph  or  so  under  "novels  of  the  day"  is 
all  the  novelist  may  expect  until  he  is  famous,  and  more 
in  quantity,  but  not  much  more  in  quality,  then.  As 
for  critical  essays  devoted  to  his  work,  discriminating 
studies  that  pick  out  the  few  good  books  from  the  many 
bad,  how  few  they  are  (and  how  welcome,  now  that  they 
are  increasing  in  number),  how  deplorably  few  in  com 
parison  with  the  quantity  of  novels,  in  comparison  with 
the  quality  of  the  best  novels! 

And  what  of  the  general  public,  that  last  arbiter  in 
a  democracy,  whose  referendum,  for  a  year  at  least, 
confirms  or  renders  null  and  void  all  critical  legislation 
good  or  bad?  The  general  public  is  apparently  on  the 
side  of  the  novelist;  to  borrow  a  slang  term  expressive 
here,  it  is  "crazy"  about  fiction.  It  reads  so  much  fic 
tion  that  hundreds  of  magazines  and  dozens  of  pub 
lishers  live  by  nothing  else.  It  reads  so  much  fiction 
that  public  libraries  have  to  bait  their  serious  books 
with  novels  in  order  to  get  them  read.  It  is  so  avid  for 
fiction  that  the  trades  whose  business  it  is  to  cultivate 
public  favor,  journalism  and  advertising,  use  almost 
as  much  fiction  as  the  novel  itself.  A  news  article  or 


A  Certain  Condescension  51 

an  interview  or  a  Sunday  write-up  nowadays  has  char 
acter,  background,  and  a  plot  precisely  like  a  short 
story.  Its  climax  is  carefully  prepared  for  in  the  best 
manner  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  and  truth  is  rigorously 
subordinated  (I  do  not  say  eliminated)  in  the  interest 
of  a  vivid  impression.  Advertising  has  become  half 
narrative  and  half  familiar  dialogue.  Household  goods 
are  sold  by  anecdotes,  ready-made  clothes  figure  in  epi 
sodes  illustrated  by  short-story  artists,  and  novelettes, 
distributed  free,  conduct  us  through  an  interesting  fic 
tion  to  the  grand  climax,  where  all  plot  complexities 
are  untangled  by  the  installation  of  an  automatic  water- 
heater.  I  am  not  criticizing  the  tendency — it  has  made 
the  pursuit  of  material  comfort  easier  and  more  inter 
esting, — but  what  a  light  it  throws  upon  our  mania  for 
reading  stories! 

Alas!  the  novel  needs  protection  from  its  friends. 
This  vast  appetite  for  fiction  is  highly  uncritical.  It 
will  swallow  anything  that  interests,  regardless  of  the 
make-up  of  the  dish.  Only  the  inexperienced  think 
that  it  is  easy  to  write  an  interesting  story;  but  it  is 
evident  that  if  a  writer  can  be  interesting  he  may  lack 
every  other  virtue  and  yet  succeed.  He  can  be  a  bad 
workman,  he  can  be  untrue,  he  can  be  sentimental,  he 
can  be  salacious,  and  yet  succeed. 

No  one  need  excite  himself  over  this  circumstance. 
It  is  inevitable  in  a  day  when  whole  classes  that  never 
read  before  begin  to  read.  The  danger  lies  in  the  atti 
tude  of  these  new  readers,  and  many  old  ones,  toward 
their  fiction.  For  they,  too,  condescend  even  when 


52  On  Fiction 

most  hungry  for  stories.  They,  too,  share  the  inherited 
opinion  that  a  novel  is  only  a  novel,  after  all,  to  be 
read,  but  not  to  be  respected,  to  be  squeezed  for  its 
juices,  then  dropped  like  a  grape-skin  and  forgotten. 
Perhaps  the  Elizabethan  mob  felt  much  the  same  way 
about  the  plays  they  crowded  to  see;  but  their  respect, 
the  critics'  respect,  Shakespeare's  respect,  for  the  lan 
guage  of  noble  poesy,  for  noble  words  and  deeds  en 
shrined  in  poetry,  is  not  paralleled  to-day  by  an  ap 
preciation  of  the  fine  art  of  imaginative  character  rep 
resentation  as  it  appears  in  our  novel  and  in  all  good 
fiction. 

Is  it  necessary  to  prove  this  public  disrespect?  The 
terms  in  which  novels  are  described  by  their  sponsors 
is  proof  enough  in  itself.  Seemingly,  everything  that  is 
reputable  must  be  claimed  for  every  novel — good 
workmanship,  vitality,  moral  excellence,  relative  su 
periority,  absolute  greatness — in  order  to  secure  for  it 
any  deference  whatsoever.  Or,  from  another  angle, 
how  many  readers  buy  novels,  and  buy  them  to  keep? 
How  many  modern  novels  does  one  find  well  bound, 
and  placed  on  the  shelves  devoted  to  "standard  read 
ing"?  In  these  Olympian  fields  a  mediocre  biography, 
a  volume  of  second-rate  poems,  a  rehash  of  history, 
will  find  their  way  before  the  novels  that  in  the  last 
decade  have  equaled,  if  not  outranked,  the  rest  of  our 
creative  literature. 

If  more  proof  were  needed,  the  curious  predilections 
of  the  serious-minded  among  our  novel-readers  would 
supply  it.  For  not  all  Americans  take  the  novel  too 


A  Certain  Condescension  53 

lightly;  some  take  it  as  heavily  as  death.  To  the  school 
that  tosses  off  and  away  the  latest  comer  is  opposed 
the  school  which,  despising  all  frivolous  stories  written 
for  pleasure  merely,  speaks  in  tense,  devoted  breath 
of  those  narratives  wherein  fiction  is  weighted  with 
facts,  and  pinned  by  a  moral  to  the  sober  side  of  life. 
It  is  significant  that  the  novels  most  highly  respected 
in  America  are  studies  of  social  conditions,  reflexes  of 
politics,  or  tales  where  the  criticism  of  morals  over 
shadows  the  narrative.  Here  the  novel  is  an  admirable 
agent.  Its  use  as  a  purveyor  of  miscellaneous  ideas 
upon  things  in  general  is  no  more  objectionable  than 
the  cutting  of  young  spruces  to  serve  as  Christmas- 
trees.  For  such  a  function  they  were  not  created,  but 
they  make  a  good  end,  nevertheless.  The  important 
inference  is  rather  that  American  readers  who  do  pre 
tend  to  take  the  novel  seriously  are  moved  not  so  much 
by  the  fiction  in  their  narratives  as  by  the  sociology, 
philosophy,  or  politics  imaginatively  portrayed.  They 
respect  a  story  with  such  a  content  because  it  comes 
as  near  as  the  novel  can  to  not  being  fiction  at  all.  And 
this,  I  imagine,  is  an  unconscious  throw-back  to  the 
old  days  when  serious-minded  readers  chose  Hannah 
More  for  the  place  of  honor,  because  her  stories  taught 
the  moralist  how  to  live  and  die. 

The  historically  minded  will  probably  remark  upon 
these  general  conclusions  that  a  certain  condescension 
toward  some  form  of  literature  has  ever  been  predict 
able  of  the  general  reader;  the  practically  minded  may 
add  that  no  lasting  harm  to  the  mind  of  man  and  the 


54  On  Fiction 

pursuit  of  happiness  seems  to  have  come  of  it.  The 
first  I  freely  admit;  the  second  I  gravely  doubt  for  the 
present  and  distrust  for  the  future.  Under  conditions 
as  we  have  them  and  will  increasingly  have  them  here 
in  America,  under  democratic  conditions,  condescen 
sion  toward  fiction,  the  most  democratic  of  literary  arts, 
is  certainly  dangerous.  It  is  dangerous  because  it  dis 
courages  good  writing.  In  this  reading  society  that 
we  have  made  for  ourselves  here  and  in  western  Eu 
rope,  where  much  inspiration,  more  knowledge,  and  a 
fair  share  of  the  joy  of  living  come  from  the  printed 
page,  good  writing  is  clearly  more  valuable  than  ever 
before  in  the  history  of  the  race.  I  do  not  agree  with 
the  pessimists  who  think  that  a  democratic  civiliza 
tion  is  necessarily  an  enemy  to  fine  writing  for  the 
public.  Such  critics  underrate  the  challenge  which 
these  millions  of  minds  to  be  reached  and  souls  to  be 
touched  must  possess  for  the  courageous  author;  they 
forget  that  writers,  like  actors,  are  inspired  by  a 
crowded  house.  But  the  thought  and  the  labor  and 
the  pain  that  lie  behind  good  writing  are  doubly  diffi 
cult  in  an  atmosphere  of  easy  tolerance  and  good- 
natured  condescension  on  the  part  of  the  readers  of  the 
completed  work. 

The  novel  is  the  test  case  for  democratic  literature. 
We  cannot  afford  to  pay  its  practitioners  with  cash 
merely,  for  cash  discriminates  in  quantity  and  little 
more.  Saul  and  David  were  judged  by  the  numbers  of 
their  thousands  slain;  but  the  test  was  a  crude  one  for 
them  and  cruder  still  for  fiction.  We  cannot  afford  to 


A  Certain  Condescension  55 

patronize  these  novelists  as  our  ancestors  did  before 
us.  Not  prizes  or  endowments  or  coterie  worship  or, 
certainly,  more  advertising  is  what  the  American 
novelist  requires,  but  a  greater  respect  for  his  craft. 
The  Elizabethan  playwright  was  frequently  despised 
of  the  learned  world,  and,  if  a  favorite  with  the  vulgar, 
not  always  a  respected  one.  Strange  that  learned  and 
vulgar  alike  should  repeat  the  fallacy  in  dispraising  the 
preeminently  popular  art  of  our  own  times!  To  Sir 
Francis  Bacon  "Hamlet"  was  presumably  only  a  play 
actor's  play.  If  the  great  American  story  should  ar 
rive  at  last,  would  we  not  call  it  "only  a  novel"? 


The  Essence  of  Popularity 

You  might  suppose  that  popular  literature  was  a  mod 
ern  invention.  Cultivated  shoulders  shrug  at  the  men 
tion  of  "best  sellers"  with  that  air  of  "the  world  is 
going  to  the  devil"  which  just  now  is  annoyingly 
familiar.  Serious  minded  people  write  of  The  Satur 
day  Evening  Post  as  if  it  represented  some  new  fanati 
cism  destined  to  wreck  civilization.  The  excessive 
popularity  of  so  many  modern  novels  is  felt  to  be  a 
mystery. 

Of  course  there  are  new  elements  in  literary  popu 
larity.  The  wave  of  interest  used  to  move  more  slowly. 
Now  thousands,  and  sometimes  millions,  read  the  popu 
lar  story  almost  simultaneously,  and  see  it,  just  a  little 
later  on  the  films.  Millions,  also,  of  the  class  which 
never  used  to  read  at  all  are  accessible  to  print  and 
have  the  moving  pictures  to  help  them. 

But  popularity  has  not  changed  its  fundamental 
characteristics.  The  sweep  of  one  man's  idea  or  fancy 
through  other  minds,  kindling  them  to  interest,  has 
been  typical  since  communication  began.  The  Greek 
romances  of  Heliodorus  may  be  analyzed  for  their 
popular  elements  quite  as  readily  as  "If  Winter 
Comes."  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  and  "The  Thousand 
and  One  Nights"  could  serve  as  models,  for  success,  and 
the  question,  What  makes  popularity  in  fiction?  be 

56 


Essence  of  Popularity  57 

answered  from  them  with  close,  if  not  complete,  refer 
ence  to  the  present.  However,  the  results  of  an  inquiry 
into  popularity  will  be  surer  if  we  stick  to  modern  liter 
ature,  not  forgetting  its  historical  background.  Human 
nature,  which  changes  its  essence  so  slowly  through  the 
centuries,  nevertheless  shows  rapid  alterations  of  phase. 
The  question  I  propose,  therefore,  is,  What  makes  a 
novel  popular  in  our  time? 

I  do  not  ask  it  for  sordid  reasons.  What  makes  a 
novel  sell  100,000  copies,  or  a  short  story  bring  $1000? 
may  seem  the  same  query;  but  it  does  not  get  the 
same  answer,  or,  apparently,  any  answer  valuable  for 
criticism.  A  cloud  descends  upon  the  eyes  of  those 
who  try  to  teach  how  to  make  money  out  of  literature 
and  blinds  them.  Their  books  go  wrong  from  the 
start,  and  most  of  them  are  nearly  worthless.  They 
propose  to  teach  the  sources  of  popularity,  yet  instead 
of  dealing  with  those  fundamental  qualities  of  emo 
tion  and  idea  which  (as  I  hope  to  show)  make  popu 
larity,  their  tale  is  all  of  emphasis,  suspense,  begin 
nings  and  endings,  the  relativity  of  characters,  dia 
logue,  setting — useful  points  for  the  artisan  but  not 
the  secret  of  popularity,  nor,  it  may  be  added,  of  great 
ness  in  literature.  Technique  is  well  enough,  in  fact 
some  technique  is  indispensable  for  a  book  that  is  to 
be  popular,  but  it  is  the  workaday  factor  in  literature, 
of  itself  it  accomplishes  nothing. 

But  technique  can  be  taught.  That  is  the  explana 
tion  of  the  hundred  books  upon  it,  and  their  justifica 
tion.  You  cannot  teach  observation,  or  sympathy,  or 


58  On  Fiction 

the  background  of  knowledge  which  makes  possible  the 
interpretation  and  selection  of  experience — not  at  least 
in  a  lesson  a  week  for  nine  months.  Hence  literary 
advisers  who  must  teach  something  and  teach  it  quickly 
are  drawn,  sometimes  against  their  better  judgment, 
to  write  books  on  technique  by  which  criticism  profits 
little.  Technical  perfection  becomes  their  equivalent 
for  excellence  and  for  popularity.  It  is  not  an  equiva 
lent.  More  than  a  mason  is  required  for  the  making 
of  a  statue. 

I  disclaim  any  attempt  to  teach  how  to  be  popular 
in  this  essay,  although  deductions  may  be  made.  I  am 
interested  in  popularity  as  a  problem  for  criticism.  I 
am  interested  in  appraising  the  pleasure  to  be  got  from 
such  popular  novels  as  "The  Age  of  Innocence,"  "Miss 
Lulu  Bett,"  "If  Winter  Comes,"  or  "The  Turmoil"— 
and  the  not  infrequent  disappointments  from  others 
equally  popular.  I  am  especially  interested  in  the  at 
tempt  to  estimate  real  excellence,  an  attempt  which  re 
quires  that  the  momentarily  popular  shall  be  separated 
from  the  permanently  good;  which  requires  that  a  dis 
tinction  be  made  between  what  must  have  some  excel 
lence  because  so  many  people  like  it,  and  what  is  good 
in  a  book  whether  many  people  like  it  or  not.  Such 
discrimination  may  not  help  the  young  novelist  to 
make  money,  but  it  can  refine  judgment  and  deepen  ap 
preciation. 

As  for  the  popularity  and  its  meaning,  there  need 
be  no  quarrel  over  that  term.  Let  us  rule  out  such  ac 
cidents  as  when  a  weak  book  becomes  widely  known 


Essence  of  Popularity  59 

because  it  is  supposed  to  be  indecent,  or  because  it  is 
the  first  to  embody  popular  propaganda,  or  because  its 
hero  is  identified  with  an  important  figure  of  real  life, 
or  for  any  other  casual  reason.  If  a  novel,  because  of 
the  intrinsic  interest  of  its  story,  or  on  account  of  the 
contagion  of  the  idea  it  contains,  is  widely  read  by 
many  kinds  of  readers,  and  if  these  readers  on  their 
own  initiative  recommend  the  book  they  have  read  to 
others,  that  is  popularity,  and  a  sufficient  definition. 

Perfection  of  form  is  not  enough  to  make  a  book 
popular.  A  story  has  to  move  or  few  will  read  it,  but 
it  is  doubtful  whether  a  greater  technical  achievement 
than  this  is  required  for  popularity.  "Samson  Agon- 
istes"  is  technically  perfect,  but  was  never  popular, 
while,  to  pass  from  the  sublime  to  its  opposite,  "This 
Side  of  Paradise"  was  most  crudely  put  together,  and 
yet  was  popular.  The  best-built  short  stories  of  the 
past  decade  have  not  been  the  most  popular,  have  not 
even  been  the  best.  No  popular  writer  but  could  have 
Been  (so  I  profoundly  believe)  more  popular  if  he  had 
written  better.  But  good  writing  is  not  a  specific  for 
unpopularity.  The  excellent  writing  of  Howells  could 
not  give  him  Mark  Twain's  audience.  The  weak  and 
tedious  construction  of  Shakespeare's  "Antony  and 
Cleopatra,"  the  flat  style  of  Hafold  Bell  Wright's  nar 
ratives,  has  not  prevented  them  from  being  liked. 
Form  is  only  a  first  step  toward  popularity. 

Far  more  important  is  an  appeal  to  the  emotions, 
which  good  technique  can  only  make  more  strong.  But 
what  is  an  appeal  to  the  emotions?  "Uncle  Tom's 


60  On  Fiction 

Cabin"  appealed  to  the  emotions,  and  so  does  "Get- 
Rich-Quick  Wallingford."  To  what  emotions  does  the 
popular  book  appeal?  What  makes  "Treasure  Island" 
popular?  Why  did  "Main  Street"  have  such  an  unex 
pected  and  still  reverberating  success? 

"Treasure  Island"  is  popular  because  it  stirs  and 
satisfies  two  instinctive  cravings  of  mankind,  the  love 
of  romantic  adventure,  and  the  desire  for  sudden 
wealth.  This  is  not  true,  or  rather  it  is  not  the  whole, 
or  even  the  important,  truth,  in  "Main  Street."  There 
the  chief  appeal  is  to  an  idea  not  an  instinct.  We  left 
the  war  nationally,  self-conscious  as  perhaps  never  be 
fore,  acutely  conscious  of  the  contrasts  between  our 
habits,  our  thinking,  our  pleasures,  our  beliefs,  and 
those  of  Europe.  When  the  soldiers  oversea  talked 
generalities  at  all  it  was  usually  of  such  topics.  The 
millions  that  never  went  abroad  were  plucked  from 
their  Main  Streets,  and  herded  through  great  cities 
to  the  mingled  companionship  of  the  camps.  "Main 
Street,"  when  it  came  to  be  written,  found  an  awak 
ened  consciousness  of  provincialism,  and  a  detached 
view  of  the  home  town  such  as  had  never  before  been 
shared  by  many.  Seeing  home  from  without  was  so 
general  as  to  constitute,  not  a  mere  experience,  but  a 
mass  emotion.  And  upon  this  new  conception,  this 
prejudice  against  every  man's  Main  Street,  the  book 
grasped,  and  thrived.  In  like  manner,  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin"  grew  great  upon  its  conception  of  slavery. 
"Robert  Elsmere"  swept  the  country  because  of  its  ex 
ploitation  of  freedom  in  religious  thought.  No  one  of 


Essence  of  Popularity  61 

these  books  could  have  been  written,  or  would  have 
been  popular  if  they  had  been  written,  before  their  pre 
cise  era;  no  one  is  likely  long  to  survive  it,  except  as  a 
social  document  which  scholars  will  read  and  historians 
quote. 

Roughly  then,  the  appeal  which  makes  for  popu 
larity  is  either  to  the  instinctive  emotions  permanent 
in  all  humanity,  though  changing  shape  with  circum 
stances,  or  to  the  fixed  ideas  of  the  period,  which  may 
often  and  justly  be  called  prejudice.  A  book  may  gain 
its  popularity  either  way,  but  the  results  of  the  first  are 
more  likely  to  be  enduring.  "Paradise  Lost,"  the  least 
popular  of  popular  poems,  still  stirs  the  instinctive 
craving  for  heroic  revolt,  and  lives  for  that  quite  as 
much  as  for  the  splendors  of  its  verse.  Dryden's  "Hind 
and  the  Panther,"  which  exploited  the  prejudices  of  its 
times,  and  was  popular  then,  is  almost  dead. 

What  are  these  instinctive  cravings  that  seek  satis 
faction  in  fiction  and,  finding  it,  make  both  great  and 
little  books  popular?  Let  me  list  a  few  without  at 
tempting  to  be  complete. 

First  in  importance  probably  is  the  desire  to  escape 
from  reality  into  a  more  interesting  life.  This  is  a 
foundation,  of  course,  of  all  romantic  stories,  and  is 
part  of  the  definition  of  the  romantic,  but  it  applies  to 
much  in  literature  that  is  not  usually  regarded  as 
romance.  A  more  interesting  life  than  yours  or  mine 
does  not  mean  one  we  should  wish  actually  to  live, 
otherwise  it  would  be  difficult  to  account  for  the  taste 
for  detective  stories  of  many  sedentary  bank  presi- 


62  On  Fiction 

dents;  nor  does  it  mean  necessarily  a  beautiful,  a  wild, 
a  romantic  life.  No,  we  wish  to  escape  to  any  imagined 
life  that  will  satisfy  desires  suppressed  by  circum 
stance,  or  incapable  of  development  in  any  attainable 
reality. 

This  desire  to  escape  is  eternal,  the  variety  differs 
with  the  individual  and  still  more  with  the  period. 
While  youthful  love,  or  romantic  adventure  as  in 
"Treasure  Island,"  has  been  an  acceptable  mode  for 
literature  at  least  as  far  back  as  the  papyrus  tales  of 
the  Egyptians,  more  precise  means  of  delivery  from  the 
intolerable  weight  of  real  life  appear  and  disappear  in 
popular  books.  In  the  early  eighteen  hundreds,  men 
and  women  longed  to  be  blighted  in  love,  to  be  in  lonely 
revolt  against  the  prosaic  well-being  of  a  world  of  little 
men.  Byron  was  popular.  In  the  Augustan  age  of 
England,  classic  antiquity  was  a  refuge  for  the  dream 
ing  spirit;  in  Shakespeare's  day,  Italy;  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  Arthurian  romance.  Just  at  present,  and  in 
America,  the  popularity  of  a  series  of  novels  like  "The 
Beautiful  and  Damned,"  "The  Wasted  Generation," 
"Erik  Dorn,"  and  "Cytherea,"  seems  to  indicate  that 
many  middle-aged  readers  wish  to  experience  vicari 
ously  the  alcoholic  irresponsibility  of  a  society  of  "flap 
pers,"  young  graduates,  and  country  club  rakes,  who 
threw  the  pilot  overboard  as  soon  as  they  left  the  war 
zone  and  have  been  cruising  wildly  ever  since.  We  re 
member  that  for  a  brief  period  in  the  England  of 
Charles  II,  James  II,  and  William  and  Mary,  rakish- 
ness  in  the  plays  of  Wycherley  and  Congreve  had  a 


Essence  of  Popularity  63 

glamour  of  romance  upon  it  and  was  popular.  Indeed, 
the  novel  or  drama  that  gives  to  a  generation  the  escape 
it  desires  will  always  be  popular.  Test  Harold  Bell 
Wright  or  Zane  Grey,  Rudyard  Kipling  or  Walter 
Scott,  by  this  maxim,  and  it  will  further  define  itself, 
and  ring  true. 

Another  human  craving  is  the  desire  to  satisfy  the 
impulses  of  sex.  This  is  much  more  difficult  to  define 
than  the  first  because  it  spreads  in  one  phase  or  an 
other  through  all  cravings.  Romance  of  course  has  its 
large  sex  element,  and  so  have  the  other  attributes  to 
be  spoken  of  later.  However,  there  is  a  direct  and 
concentrated  interest  in  the  relations  between  the  sexes 
which,  in  its  finer  manifestations,  seeks  for  a  vivid  con 
trast  of  personalities  in  love;  in  its  cruder  forms  de 
sires  raw  passion;  in  its  pathological  state  craves  the 
indecent.  A  thousand  popular  novels  illustrate  the 
first  phase;  many  more,  of  which  the  cave-man  story, 
the  desert  island  romance,  "The  Sheik"  and  its  com 
panions  are  examples,  represent  the  second;  the  ever- 
surging  undercurrent  of  pornography  springs  to  satisfy 
the  third. 

Many  sex  stories  are  popular  simply  because  they 
satisfy  curiosity,  but  curiosity  in  a  broader  sense  is  a 
human  craving  which  deserves  a  separate  category. 
Popular  novels  seldom  depend  upon  it  entirely,  but 
they  profit  by  it,  sometimes  hugely.  A  novel  like  Dos 
Passos's  "Three  Soldiers,"  or  Mrs.  Wharton's  "Age  of 
Innocence,"  or  Mrs.  Atherton's  "Sleeping  Fires,"  makes 
its  first,  though  not  usually  its  strongest,  appeal  to  our 


64  On  Fiction 

curiosity  as  to  how  others  live  or  were  living.  This  was 
the  strength  of  the  innumerable  New  England,  Creole, 
mountaineer,  Pennsylvania  Dutch  stones  in  the  flour 
ishing  days  of  local  color.  It  is  a  prop  of  the  historical 
novel  and  a  strong  right  arm  for  the  picture  melodrama 
of  the  underworld  or  the  West.  Indeed,  the  pictures, 
by  supplying  a  photographic  background  of  real  scenes 
inaccessible  to  the  audience  have  gained  a  point  upon 
the  written  story. 

Curiosity  is  a  changeable  factor,  a  sure  play  for  im 
mediate  popularity,  but  not  to  be  depended  upon  for 
long  life.  It  waxes  and  wanes  and  changes  its  object. 
Just  now  we  are  curious  about  Russia,  the  South  Sea 
Islanders,  and  night  life  on  Broadway;  to-morrow  it 
may  be  New  Zealand  and  Australia,  the  Argentine 
millionaire,  and  quite  certainly  the  Chinese  and  China. 
Books  appealing  to  the  craving  for  escape  have  a  longer 
life,  for  a  story  that  takes  a  generation  out  of  itself 
into  fairyland  keeps  some  of  its  power  for  the  next. 
Nevertheless,  the  writer  who  guesses  where  curious 
minds  are  reaching  and  gives  them  what  they  want, 
puts  money  in  his  purse. 

A  fourth  craving,  which  is  as  general  as  fingers  and 
toes,  is  for  revenge.  We  laugh  now  at  the  plays  of  re 
venge  before  "Hamlet,"  where  the  stage  ran  blood,  and 
even  the  movie  audience  no  longer  enjoys  a  story  the 
single  motive  of  which  is  physical  revenge.  Blood  for 
blood  means  to  us  either  crime  or  rowdyism.  And  yet 
revenge  is  just  as  popular  in  literature  now  as  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  Only  its  aspect  has  changed.  Our 


Essence  of  Popularity  65 

fathers  are  not  butchered  in  feuds,  our  sons  are  not  sold 
into  slavery,  and  except  in  war  or  in  street  robberies 
we  are  not  insulted  by  brute  physical  force.  Never 
theless  we  are  cheated  by  scoundrels,  oppressed  by 
financial  tyranny,  wounded  by  injustice,  suppressed  by 
self-sufficiency,  rasped  by  harsh  tempers,  annoyed  by 
snobbery,  and  often  ruined  by  unconscious  selfishness. 
We  long  to  strike  back  at  the  human  traits  which  have 
wronged  us,  and  the  satiric  depiction  of  hateful  charac 
ters  whose  seeming  virtues  are  turned  upside  down  to 
expose  their  impossible  hearts  feeds  our  craving  for 
vicarious  revenge.  We  dote  upon  vinegarish  old  maids, 
self-righteous  men,  and  canting  women  when  they  are 
exposed  by  narrative  art,  and  especially  when  poetic 
justice  wrecks  them.  The  books  that  contain  them  bid 
for  popularity.  It  happens  that  in  rapid  succession  we 
have  seen  three  novels  in  which  this  element  of  popular 
success  was  strong:  Miss  Sinclair's  "Mr.  Waddington 
of  Wyck,"  "Vera,"  by  the  author  of  "Elizabeth  in  Her 
German  Garden,"  and  Mr.  Hutchinson's  "If  Winter 
Comes."  The  first  two  books  focus  upon  this  quality, 
and  their  admirable  unity  gives  them  superior  force; 
but  it  is  noteworthy  that  "If  Winter  Comes,"  which 
adds  other  popular  elements  in  large  measure  to  its  re 
lease  of  hate,  has  been  financially  the  most  successful 
of  the  three. 

To  these  deep  cravings  of  the  heart  must  be  added 
another  of  major  importance.  I  mean  aspiration,  the 
deep  desire  of  all  human  without  exception  sometimes 
to  be  better,  nobler,  finer,  truer.  Stories  of  daring  in 


66  On  Fiction 

the  face  of  unconquerable  odds,  stories  of  devotion, 
above  all  stones  of  self-sacrifice  are  made  to  gratify 
this  emotion.  They  are  purges  for  the  restless  soul. 
Some  critic  of  our  short  story  discovered  not  long  ago 
that  the  bulk  of  the  narratives  chosen  for  reprinting 
had  self-sacrifice  as  theme.  This  is  precisely  what  one 
would  expect  of  comfortable,  ease-loving  peoples,  like 
the  Germans  before  the  empire  and  the  Americans  of 
our  generation.  When  no  real  sacrifice  of  goods,  of 
energy,  of  love,  or  of  life  is  necessary,  then  the  crav 
ing  for  stories  of  men  who  give  up  all  and  women  who 
efface  themselves  is  particularly  active.  The  hard,  in 
dividualistic  stories  of  selfish  characters — Ben  Hecht's 
for  example,  and  Scott  Fitzgerald's — have  been  written 
after  a  war  period  of  enforced  self-sacrifice  and  by 
young  men  who  were  familiar  with  suffering  for  a  cause. 
But  most  American  readers  of  our  generation  live  easily 
and  have  always  lived  easily,  and  that  undoubtedly  ac 
counts  for  the  extraordinary  popularity  here  of  aspir 
ing  books.  Reading  of  a  fictitious  hero  who  suffers  for 
others  is  a  tonic  for  our  conscience,  and  like  massage 
takes  the  place  of  exercise.  By  a  twist  in  the  same 
argument,  it  may  be  seen  that  the  cheerful  optimist  in 
fiction,  who  Pollyannawise  believes  all  is  for  the  best, 
satisfies  the  craving  to  justify  our  well-being.  I  do  not, 
however,  mean  to  disparage  this  element  of  popularity. 
It  is  after  all  the  essential  quality  of  tragedy  where 
the  soul  rises  above  misfortune.  It  is  a  factor  in  noble 
literature  as  well  as  in  popular  success. 

So  much  for  some  of  the  typical  and  instinctive  crav- 


Essence  of  Popularity  67 

ings  which  cry  for  satisfaction  and  are  the  causes  of 
popularity.  To  them  may  be  added  others  of  course, 
notably  the  desire  for  sudden  wealth,  which  is  a  factor 
in  "Treasure  Island'7  as  in  all  treasure  stories,  and  the 
prime  cause  of  success  in  the  most  popular  of  all  plots, 
the  tale  of  Cinderella,  which,  after  passing  through 
feudal  societies  with  a  prince's  hand  as  reward,  changed 
its  sloven  sister  for  a  shopgirl  and  King  Cophetua  into 
a  millionaire,  and  swept  the  American  stage.  To  this 
may  also  be  added  simpler  stimulants  of  instinctive 
emotion,  humor  stirring  to  pleasant  laughter,  pathos 
that  exercises  sympathy,  the  happy  ending  that  makes 
for  joy.  Stories  which  succeed  because  they  stir  and 
satisfy  in  this  fashion  are  like  opera  in  a  foreign  tongue, 
which  moves  us  even  when  we  do  not  fully  understand 
the  reason  for  our  emotion.  They  differ  from  another 
kind  of  popular  story,  in  which  a  popular  idea  rather 
than  an  instinctive  emotion  is  crystallized,  and  which 
now  must  be  considered. 

Each  generation  has  its  fixed  ideas.  A  few  are  in 
herited  intact  by  the  generation  that  follows,  a  few  are 
passed  on  with  slight  transformation,  but  most  crumble 
or  change  into  different  versions  of  the  old  half-truths. 
Among  the  most  enduring  of  prejudices  is  the  fallacy 
of  the  good  old  times.  Upon  that  formula  nine-tenths 
of  the  successful  historical  romances  are  built.  That 
American  wives  suffer  from  foreign  husbands,  that 
capital  is  ruthless,  that  youth  is  right  and  age  wrong, 
that  energy  wins  over  intellect,  that  virtue  is  always 
rewarded,  are  American  conceptions  of  some  endurance 


68  On  Fiction 

that  have  given  short  but  lofty  flights  to  thousands  of 
native  stories. 

More  important,  however,  in  the  history  of  fiction  are 
those  wide  and  slow  moving  currents  of  opinion,  for 
which  prejudice  is  perhaps  too  narrow  a  name,  which 
flow  so  imperceptibly  through  the  minds  of  a  genera 
tion  or  a  whole  century  that  there  is  little  realization 
of  their  novelty.  Such  a  slow-moving  current  was  the 
humanitarianism  which  found  such  vigorous  expression 
in  Dickens,  the  belief  in  industrial  democracy  which  is 
being  picked  up  as  a  theme  by  novelist  after  novelist 
to-day,  or  the  sense  of  the  value  of  personality  and  hu 
man  experience  which  so  intensely  characterizes  the 
literature  of  the  early  Renaissance. 

If  a  novel  draws  up  into  itself  one  of  these  ideas, 
filling  it  with  emotion,  it  gains  perhaps  its  greatest  as 
surance  of  immediate  popularity.  If  the  idea  is  of 
vast  social  importance,  this  popularity  may  continue. 
But  if  it  is  born  of  immediate  circumstance,  like  the 
hatred  of  slavery  in  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  or  if  it  is 
still  more  transient,  say,  the  novelty  of  a  new  invention, 
like  the  airplane  or  wireless,  then  the  book  grows  stale 
with  its  theme.  The  like  is  true  of  a  story  that  teaches 
a  lesson  a  generation  are  willing  to  be  taught — it  lives 
as  long  as  the  lesson.  What  has  become  of  Charles 
Kingsley's  novels,  of  the  apologues  of  Maria  Edgeworth? 
"Main  Street"  is  such  a  story;  so  was  aMr.  Britling 
Sees  It  Through";  so  probably  "A  Doll's  House."  De 
cay  is  already  at  their  hearts.  Only  the  student  knows 
how  many  like  tales  that  preached  fierily  a  text  for  the 


Essence  of  Popularity  69 

times  have  died  in  the  past.  But  I  am  writing  of  popu 
larity  not  of  permanence.  In  four  popular  novels  out 
of  five,  even  in  those  where  the  appeal  to  the  instinctive 
emotions  is  dominant,  suspect  some  prejudice  of  the 
times  embodied  and  usually  exploited.  It  is  the  most 
potent  of  lures  for  that  ever  increasing  public  which 
has  partly  trained  intelligence  as  well  as  emotions. 

Perhaps  it  is  already  clear  that  most  popular  novels 
combine  many  elements  of  popularity,  although  usually 
one  is  dominant.  Among  the  stories,  for  instance,  which 
I  have  mentioned  most  frequently,  "Main  Street"  de 
pends  upon  a  popular  idea,  but  makes  use  also  of  the 
revenge  motive.  It  is  not  at  all,  as  many  hasty  critics 
said,  an  appeal  to  curiosity.  We  know  our  Main  Streets 
well  enough  already.  And  therefore  in  England,  which 
also  was  not  curious  about  Main  Streets,  and  where 
the  popular  idea  that  Sinclair  Lewis  seized  upon  was 
not  prevalent,  the  book  has  had  only  a  moderate  suc 
cess.  "If  Winter  Comes"  combines  the  revenge  motive 
with  aspiration.  Scott  Fitzgerald's  first  novel  made  its 
strong  appeal  to  curiosity.  We  had  heard  of  the  wild 
younger  generation  and  were  curious.  His  second  book 
depends  largely  upon  the  craving  for  sex  experience, 
in  which  it  resembles  Mr.  Hergesheimer's  "Cytherea," 
but  also  plays  heavily  upon  the  motive  of  escape,  and 
upon  sheer  curiosity.  "Miss  Lulu  Bett"  was  a  story 
of  revenge.  Booth  Tarkington's  "Alice  Adams" — to 
bring  in  a  new  title — is  a  good  illustration  of  a  story 
where  for  once  a  popular  novelist  slurred  over  the  popu 
lar  elements  in  order  to  concentrate  upon  a  study  of 


70  On  Fiction 

character.  His  book  received  tardy  recognition  but  it 
disappointed  his  less  critical  admirers.  Mr.  White's 
"Andivius  Hedulio"  depends  for  its  popularity  upon 
curiosity  and  escape. 

The  popular  story,  then,  the  financially  successful, 
the  immediately  notorious  story,  should  appeal  to  the 
instinctive  emotions  and  may  be  built  upon  popular 
prejudice.  What  is  the  moral  for  the  writer?  Is  he 
to  lay  out  the  possible  fields  of  emotion  as  a  surveyor 
prepares  for  his  blue  print?  By  no  means.  Unless  he 
follows  his  own  instinct  in  the  plan,  or  narrates  because 
of  his  own  excited  thinking  he  will  produce  a  thinly 
clad  formula  rather  than  a  successful  story.  There  is 
no  moral  for  the  writer,  only  some  rays  of  light  thrown 
upon  the  nature  of  his  achievement  The  way  to  ac 
complish  popularity,  if  that  is  what  you  want,  is  to 
write  for  the  people,  and  let  formula,  once  it  is  under 
stood,  take  care  of  itself.  As  an  editor,  wise  in  popu 
larity,  once  said  to  me,  "Oppenheim  and  the  rest  are 
popular  because  they  think  like  the  people  not  for 
them." 

What  is  the  moral  of  this  discussion  for  the  critical 
reader?  A  great  one,  for  if  he  does  not  wish  to  be 
tricked  constantly  by  his  own  emotions  into  supposing 
that  what  is  timely  is  therefore  fine,  and  what  moves 
him  is  therefore  great,  he  must  distinguish  between  the 
elements  of  popularity  and  the  essence  of  greatness.  It 
is  evident,  I  think,  from  the  argument  that  every  ele 
ment  of  popularity  described  above  may  be  made  ef 
fective  upon  our  weak  human  nature  with  only  an  ap- 


Essence  of  Popularity  71 

proximation  to  truth.  The  craving  for  escape  may 
be,  and  usually  is,  answered  by  sentimental  romance, 
where  every  emotion,  from  patriotism  to  amorousness, 
is  mawkish  and  unreal.  Every  craving  may  be  played 
upon  in  the  same  fashion  just  because  it  is  a  craving, 
and  the  result  be  often  more  popular  for  the  exaggera 
tion.  Also  it  is  notorious  that  a  prejudice — or  a  pop 
ular  idea,  if  you  prefer  the  term — which  is  seized  upon 
for  fiction,  almost  inevitably  is  strained  beyond  logic 
and  beyond  truth,  so  much  so  that  in  rapid  years,  like 
those  of  1916  to  1920  which  swept  us  into  propaganda 
and  out  again,  the  emphatic  falsity  of  a  book's  central 
thesis  may  be  recognized  before  the  first  editions  are 
exhausted.  It  would  be  interesting  to  run  off,  in  the 
midst  of  a  1922  performance,  some  of  the  war  films 
that  stirred  audiences  of  1918.  It  will  be  interesting 
to  reread  some  of  the  cheaper  and  more  popular  war 
stories  that  carried  even  you,  O  judicious  reader,  off 
your  even  balance  not  five  years  ago  to-day! 

We  have  always  known,  of  course,  that  a  novel  can 
be  highly  popular  without  being  truly  excellent. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  a  valuable  discipline  to  specify  the 
reasons.  And  it  is  good  discipline  also  in  estimating 
the  intrinsic  value  of  a  novel  to  eliminate  as  far  as  is 
possible  the  temporal  and  the  accidental;  and  in  par 
ticular  the  especial  appeal  it  may  have  to  your  own 
private  craving — for  each  of  us  has  his  soft  spot  where 
the  pen  can  pierce.  On  the  contrary,  if  the  highly 
speculative  business  of  guessing  the  probable  circula 
tion  of  a  novel  ever  becomes  yours,  then  you  must 


72  On  Fiction 

doubly  emphasize  the  importance  of  these  very  quali 
ties;  search  for  them,  analyze  them  out  of  the  narra 
tive,  equate  them  with  the  tendencies  of  the  times,  the 
new  emotions  stirring,  the  new  interests,  new  thoughts 
abroad,  and  then  pick  best  sellers  in  advance. 

Yet  in  eliminating  the  accidental  in  the  search  for 
real  excellence,  it  would  be  disastrous  to  eliminate  all 
causes  of  popularity  with  it.  That  would  be  to  assume 
that  the  good  story  cannot  be  popular,  which  is  non 
sense.  The  best  books  are  nearly  always  popular, 
if  not  in  a  year,  certainly  in  a  decade  or  a  century. 
Often  they  spread  more  slowly  than  less  solid  achieve 
ments  for  the  same  reason  that  dear  things  sell  less 
rapidly  than  cheap.  The  best  books  cost  more  to 
read  because  they  contain  more,  and  to  get  much  out 
the  reader  must  always  put  much  in.  Nevertheless,  the 
good  novel  will  always  contain  one  or  more  of  the 
elements  of  popularity  in  great  intensity.  I  make  but 
one  exception,  and  that  for  those  creations  of  the  sheer 
intellect,  like  the  delicate  analyses  of  Henry  James, 
where  the  appeal  is  to  the  subtle  mind,  and  the  emotion 
aroused  an  intellectual  emotion.  Such  novels  are  on 
the  heights,  but  they  are  never  at  the  summit  of  literary 
art.  They  are  limited  by  the  partiality  of  their  appeal, 
just  as  they  are  exalted  by  the  perfection  of  their  ac 
complishment.  They  cannot  be  popular,  and  are  not. 

The  "best  seller"  therefore  may  be  great  but  does 
not  need  to  be.  It  is  usually  a  weak  book,  no  matter 
how  readable,  because  ordinarily  it  has  only  the  ele 
ments  of  popularity  to  go  on,  and  succeeds  by  their 


Essence  of  Popularity  73 

number  and  timeliness  instead  of  by  fineness  and  truth. 
A  second-rate  man  can  compound  a  best  seller  if  his 
sense  for  the  popular  is  first-rate.     In  his  books  the 
instinctive  emotions  are  excited  over  a  broad  area,  and 
arise  rapidly  to  sink  again.    No  better  examples  can 
be  found  than  in  the  sword-and-buckler  romance  of 
our  'nineties  which  set  us  all  for  a  while  thinking 
feudal  thoughts  and  talking  shallow  gallantry.     Now 
it  is  dead,  stone  dead.    Not  even  the  movies  can  re 
vive  it.    The  emotions  it  aroused  went  flat  over  night. 
Much  the  same  is  true  of  books  that  trade  in  prejudice, 
like  the  white  slave  stories  of  a  decade  ago.     For  a 
moment  we  were  stirred  to  the  depths.    We  swallowed 
the  concept  whole  and  raged  with  a  furious  indigestion 
of  horrible  fact.    And  then  it  proved  to  be  colic  only. 
With  such  a  light  ballast  of  prejudice  or  sentiment 
can  the  profitable  ship  popularity  be  kept  upright  for 
a  little  voyage,  and  this,  prevailingly,  is  all  her  cargo. 
But  the  wise  writer,  if  he  is  able,  as  Scott,  and  Dickens, 
and  Clemens  were  able,  freights  her  more  deeply.    As 
for  the  good  reader,  he  will  go  below  to  investigate 
before  the  voyage  commences;  or,  if  in  midcourse  he 
likes  not  his  carrier,  take  off  in  his  mental  airplane 
and  seek  another  book. 


II 

On  the  American  Tradition 


The  American  Tradition 

I  REMEMBER  a  talk  in  Dublin  with  an  Irish  writer 
whose  English  prose  has  adorned  our  period.  It  was 
1918,  and  the  eve  of  forced  conscription,  and  his 
indignation  with  English  policy  was  intense.  "I  will 
give  up  their  language/'  he  said,  "all  except  Shake 
speare.  I  will  write  only  Gaelic."  Unfortunately,  he 
could  read  Gaelic  much  better  than  he  could  write  it. 
In  his  heart,  indeed,  he  knew  how  mad  he  would  have 
been  to  give  up  the  only  literary  tradition  which,  thanks 
to  language,  could  be  his  own;  and  in  a  calmer  mood 
since  he  has  enriched  that  tradition  with  admirable 
translations  from  the  Irish.  He  was  suffering  from 
a  mild  case  of  Anglomania. 

Who  is  the  real  Anglomaniac  in  America?  Not  the 
now  sufficiently  discredited  individual  with  a  monocle 
and  a  pseudo-Oxford  accent,  who  tries  to  be  more 
English  than  the  English.  Not  the  more  subtly  dan 
gerous  American  who  refers  his  tastes,  his  enthusiasms, 
his  culture,  and  the  prestige  of  his  compatriots  to  an 
English  test  before  he  dare  assert  them.  The  real 
Anglomaniac  is  the  American  who  tries  to  be  less  Eng 
lish  than  his  own  American  tradition.  He  is  the  man 
who  is  obsessed  with  the  fear  of  "Anglo-Saxon  domi 
nation." 

How  many  Anglomaniacs  by  this  definition  are  at 

77 


78  On  the  American  Tradition 

large  in  America  each  reader  may  judge  for  himself. 
Personally,  I  find  them  extraordinarily  numerous,  and 
of  so  many  varieties,  from  the  mere  borrower  of  opin 
ions  to  the  deeply  convinced  zealot,  that  it  seems  wiser 
to  analyze  Anglomania  than  to  discuss  the  various 
types  that  possess  it.  And  in  this  analysis  let  us 
exclude  from  the  beginning  such  very  real,  but  tem 
porary,  grievances  against  the  English  as  spring  from 
Irish  oppressions,  trade  rivalries,  or  the  provocations 
which  always  arise  between  allies  in  war.  All  such 
causes  of  anti-English  and  anti-"Anglo-Saxon"  senti 
ment  belong  in  a  different  category  from  the  underlying 
motives  which  I  propose  to  discuss. 

These  new  Anglomaniacs,  with  their  talk  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  domination,  cannot  mean  English  domination. 
That  would  be  absurd,  although  even  absurdities  are 
current  coin  in  restless  years  like  these.  At  least  one 
Irishman  of  my  acquaintance  knows  that  King  George 
cabled  Wilson  to  bring  America  into  the  war,  and  that 
until  that  cable  came  Wilson  dared  not  act.  I  can 
conceive  of  an  English  influence  upon  literature  that 
is  worth  attacking,  and  also  worth  defending.  I  can 
conceive  of  a  far  less  important  English  influence  upon 
our  social  customs.  But  in  neither  case,  domination. 
That  England  dominates  our  finance,  our  industry,  our 
politics,  is  just  now,  especially,  the  suspicion  of  a  para 
noiac,  or  the  idea  of  an  ignoramus. 

"Anglo-Saxon  domination,"  even  in  an  anti-British 
meeting,  cannot  and  does  not  mean  English  domina 
tion;  it  can  mean  only  control  of  America  by  the  so- 


The  American  Tradition  79 

called  Anglo-Saxon  element  in  our  population.  The 
quarrel  is  local,  not  international.  The  "Anglo-Saxon" 
three  thousand  miles  away  who  cannot  hit  back  is  a 
scapegoat,  a  whipping  boy  for  the  so-called  "Anglo- 
Saxon"  American  at  home. 

What  is  an  "Anglo-Saxon"  American?  Presumably 
he  is  the  person  familiar  in  "want"  advertisements: 
"American  family  wants  boarder  for  the  summer.  Ref 
erences  exchanged."  But  this  does  not  help  us  much. 
He  is  certainly  not  English.  Nothing  is  better  estab 
lished  than  the  admixture  of  bloods  since  the  earliest 
days  of  our  nationality.  That  I,  myself,  for  example, 
have  ancestral  portions  of  French,  German,  Welsh,  and 
Scotch,  as  well  as  English  blood  in  my  veins,  makes 
me,  by  any  historical  test,  characteristically  more 
rather  than  less  American.  Race,  indeed,  within  very 
broad  limits,  is  utterly  different  from  nationality,  and 
it  is  usually  many,  many  centuries  before  the  two 
become  even  approximately  identical.  The  culture  I 
have  inherited,  the  political  ideals  I  live  by,  the  litera 
ture  which  is  my  own,  most  of  all  the  language  that  I 
speak,  are  far  more  important  than  the  ultimate  race 
or  races  I  stem  from,  obviously  more  important,  since 
in  thousands  of  good  Americans  it  is  impossible  to 
determine  what  races  have  gone  to  their  making.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  an  Anglo-Saxon  American — and  so 
few  English  Americans  that  they  are  nationally  insig 
nificant. 

An  American  with  a  strong  national  individuality 
there  certainly  is,  and  it  is  true  that  his  traditions, 


80  On  the  American  Tradition 

irrespective  of  the  race  of  his  forbears,  are  mainly 
English;  from  England  he  drew  his  political  and  social 
habits,  his  moral  ideas,  his  literature,  and  his  language. 
This  does  not  make  him  a  "slave  to  England,"  as  our 
most  recent  propagandists  would  have  it;  it  does  not 
put  him  in  England's  debt.  We  owe  no  debt  to  Eng 
land.  Great  Britain,  Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand, 
South  Africa,  and  ourselves  are  deeply  in  debt  to  our 
intellectual,  our  spiritual,  our  esthetic  ancestors  who 
were  the  molders  of  English  history  and  English 
thought,  the  interpreters  of  English  emotion,  the  mas 
ters  of  the  developing  English  mores  that  became  our 
mores,  and  have  since  continued  evolution  with  a  dif 
ference.  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Spenser,  and  Milton, 
Wycliffe,  Bunyan,  Fox,  and  Wesley,  Elizabeth,  Crom 
well,  and  the  great  Whigs,  these  made  the  only  tra 
dition  that  can  be  called  Anglo-Saxon,  and  if  we  have 
an  American  tradition,  as  we  assuredly  have,  here  are 
its  roots.  This  is  our  "Anglo-Saxon  domination." 

But  if  the  roots  of  this  tradition  are  English,  its 
trunk  is  thoroughly  American,  seasoned  and  developed 
through  two  centuries  of  specifically  American  history. 
As  we  know  it  to-day  it  is  no  longer  "Anglo-Saxon," 
it  is  as  American  as  our  cities,  our  soil,  our  accent 
upon  English.  If  we  are  going  to  discuss  "domination" 
let  us  be  accurate  and  speak  of  the  domination  of 
American  tradition.  It  is  against  the  American  tradi 
tion  that  the  new  Anglomaniac  actually  protests. 

Dominating  this  American  tradition  is,  dominating, 
almost  tyrannical,  for  one  reason  only,  but  that  a 


The  American   Tradition  81 

strong  one,  a  fact  not  a  convention,  a  factor,  not  a 
mere  influence — dominating  because  of  the  English 
language. 

In  our  century  language  has  become  once  again  as 
powerful  as  in  the  Roman  Empire — and  its  effects, 
thanks  to  printing  and  easy  transportation,  are  far 
more  quickly  attained.  Hordes  from  all  over  Europe 
have  swarmed  into  the  domain  of  English.  They  have 
come  to  a  country  where  the  new  language  was  in 
dispensable.  They  have  learned  it,  or  their  children 
have  learned  it.  English  has  become  their  means  of 
communication  with  their  neighbors,  with  business,  with 
the  state.  Sooner  or  later  even  the  news  of  Europe 
has  come  to  them  through  English,  and  sometimes 
unwillingly,  but  more  often  unconsciously,  they  have 
come  under  the  American,  the  real  "Anglo-Saxon'7 
domination. 

For  a  language,  of  course,  is  more  than  words.  It 
is  a  body  of  literature,  it  is  a  method  of  thinking,  it 
is  a  definition  of  emotions,  it  is  the  exponent  and  the 
symbol  of  a  civilization.  You  cannot  adopt  English 
without  adapting  yourself  in  some  measure  to  the  Eng 
lish,  or  the  Anglo-American  tradition.  You  cannot 
adopt  English  political  words,  English  literary  words, 
English  religious  words,  the  terms  of  sport  or  ethics, 
without  in  some  measure  remaking  your  mind  on  a 
new  model.  If  you  fail  or  refuse,  your  child  will  not. 
He  is  forcibly  made  an  American,  in  ideas  at  least, 
and  chiefly  by  language. 

I  submit  that  it  is  impossible  for  an  alien  thoroughly 


82  On  the  American  Tradition 

to  absorb  and  understand  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Speech 
or  Hawthorne's  "Scarlet  Letter"  without  working  a 
slight  but  perceptible  transformation  in  the  brain,  with 
out  making  himself  an  heir  of  a  measure  of  English 
tradition.  And  the  impact  of  English  as  a  spoken 
tongue,  and  the  influence  of  its  literature  as  the  only 
read  literature,  are  great  beyond  ordinary  conception. 
Communities  where  a  foreign  language  is  read  or 
spoken  only  delay  the  process,  they  cannot  stop  it. 

The  foreigner,  it  is  true,  has  modified  the  English 
language  precisely  as  he  has  modified  the  American 
tradition.  Continental  Europe  is  audible  in  the  Ameri 
can  tongue,  as  it  is  evident  in  the  American  mind; 
but  it  is  like  the  English  or  the  Spanish  touch  upon 
the  Gothic  style  in  architecture — there  is  modification, 
but  not  fundamental  change. 

Many  a  foreign-born  American  has  been  restless 
under  this  domination.  The  letters  and  memoirs  of 
the  French  immigrants  from  revolutionary  France  ex 
press  discomfort  freely.  The  Germans  of  '48,  them 
selves  the  bearers  of  a  high  civilization,  have  often 
confessed  an  unwilling  assimilation.  The  Germans  of 
earlier  migrations  herded  apart  like  the  later  Scandi 
navians,  in  part  to  avoid  the  tyranny  of  tongue. 

Imagine  a  German  coming  here  in  early  manhood. 
His  tradition  is  not  English;  he  owes  nothing  to  a 
contemporary  England  that  he  but  dimly  knows. 
Speaking  English,  perhaps  only  English,  he  grows  im 
patient  with  a  tongue  every  concept  of  which  has  an 
English  coloring.  The  dominance  of  the  language,  and 


The  American  Tradition  83 

especially  of  its  literature,  irks  him.  He  no  longer 
wants  to  think  as  a  German;  he  wants  to  think  as  an 
American;  but  the  medium  of  his  thought  must  be 
English.  His  anger  often  enough  goes  out  against  Eng 
lish  history,  English  literature.  He  is  easily  irritated 
by  England.  But  it  is  the  American  past  that  binds 
and  is  converting  him.  Such  consciousness  of  the 
power  of  environment  is  perhaps  rare,  but  the  fact 
is  common.  In  our  few  centuries  of  history  millions 
have  been  broken  into  English,  with  all  that  implies. 
Millions  have  experienced  the  inevitable  discomfort 
of  a  foreign  tradition  which  makes  alien  their  father 
lands,  and  strangers  of  their  children.  This  is  an 
"Anglo-Saxon"  domination.  But  it  is  useless  to  struggle 
against  it. 

There  is  a  similar  discomfort  among  certain  Ameri 
can  authors,  especially  just  now,  when,  for  the  first 
time  since  the  Civil  War  and  the  materialism  that  suc 
ceeded  it,  we  are  finding  our  national  self  once  again 
in  literature.  Mr.  Mencken  and  Mr.  Dreiser  have 
vigorously  expressed  this  annoyance  with  American  tra 
dition.  They  wish  to  break  with  it — at  least  Mr. 
Dreiser  does — break  with  it  morally,  spiritually,  es- 
thetically.  Let  the  dotards,  he  says,  bury  their  dead. 

Mr.  Mencken  wishes  to  drive  us  out  of  Colonialism. 
He  says  that  Longfellow  has  had  his  day,  and  that 
it  is  time  to  stop  imitating  Addison,  time  to  be  ashamed 
of  aping  Stevenson,  Kipling,  or  John  Masefield.  He 
is  right. 

But  when  it  comes  to  disowning  English  literature 


84  On  the  American   Tradition 

and  the  past  of  American  literature  (as  many  a  writer 
directly  or  by  implication  would  have  us)  in  order  to 
become  100  per  cent  American,  let  us  first  take  breath 
long  enough  to  reflect  that,  first,  such  a  madcap  career 
is  eminently  undesirable,  and,  second,  utterly  impossi 
ble.  It  is  a  literature  which  by  general  admission  is 
now  the  richest  and  most  liberal  in  the  world  of  living 
speech.  English  is  a  tongue  less  sonorous  than  Italian, 
less  fine  than  French,  less  homely  than  German,  but 
more  expressive,  more  flexible,  than  these  and  all  others. 
Its  syntax  imposes  no  burdens,  its  traditions  are  weighty 
only  upon  the  vulgar  and  the  bizarre.  Without  its 
literary  history,  American  literature  in  general,  and 
usually  in  particular,  is  not  to  be  understood.  That 
we  have  sprung  from  a  Puritanical  loin,  and  been  nour 
ished  in  the  past  from  the  breast  of  Victorianism,  is 
obvious.  In  this  we  have  been  not  too  much,  but  too 
narrowly,  English.  We  have  read  Tennyson  when  it 
might  have  been  better  to  have  read  Shakespeare  or 
Chaucer.  But  to  wish  to  break  with  English  literature 
in  order  to  become  altogether  American  is  like  desiring 
to  invent  an  entirely  new  kind  of  clothes.  I  shall 
not  give  up  trousers  because  my  fourth  great-grand 
father,  who  was  a  Yorkshireman,  wore  them,  and  his 
pattern  no  longer  fits  my  different  contour.  I  shall 
make  me  a  pair  better  suiting  my  own  shanks — yet 
they  shall  still  be  trousers.  But  in  any  case,  language 
binds  us. 

Indeed,  in  this  welter  of  newcomers  here  in  America, 
whose  children  learn,  read,  write  only  English,  the  tra- 


The  American  Tradition  85 

dition  of  Anglo-American  literature  is  all  that  holds 
us  by  a  thread  above  chaos.  If  we  could  all  be  made 
to  speak  German,  or  Italian,  or  Spanish,  there  would 
be  cause,  but  no  excuse,  for  an  attempted  revolution. 
But  English  is  dominant  here  and  will  remain  so. 
Could  we  hope  to  make  an  American  literary  language 
without  dependence  on  English  literature,  a  protective 
tariff  on  home-made  writing,  or  an  embargo  against 
books  more  than  a  year  old,  or  imported  from  across 
the  Atlantic,  would  be  worth  trying;  but  the  attempts 
so  far  are  not  encouraging.  This  has  not  been  the 
way  in  the  past  by  which  original  literatures  have  been 
made.  They  have  sucked  nourishment  where  it  could 
best  be  found,  and  grown  great  from  the  strength  that 
good  food  gave  them. 

One  can  sympathize  with  the  desire  to  nationalize 
our  literature  at  all  costs;  and  can  understand  lashings 
out  at  the  tyranny  of  literary  prestige  which  England 
still  exercises.  But  the  real  question  is:  shall  the 
English  of  Americans  be  good  English  or  bad  English; 
shall  a  good  tradition  safeguard  change  and  experi 
ment,  or  shall  we  have  chaotic  vulgarity  like  the  Low 
Latin  of  the  late  Roman  Empire? 

The  truth  is  that  our  language  is  tradition,  for  it 
holds  tradition  in  solution  like  iron  in  wine.  And  here 
lie  the  secret  and  the  power  of  American,  "Anglo- 
Saxon"  domination. 

What  is  to  be  done  about  it?  Shall  anything  be 
done  about  it?  The  Anglomaniac  is  helpless  before 


86  On  the  American  Tradition 

the  fact  of  language.  The  most  he  can  do  is  to  attack, 
and  uproot  if  he  can,  the  American  tradition. 

There  is  nothing  sacrosanct  in  this  American  tradi 
tion.  Like  all  traditions  it  is  stiff,  it  will  clasp,  if  we 
allow  it,  the  future  in  the  dead  hand  of  precedent. 
It  can  be  used  by  the  designing  to  block  progress.  But 
as  traditions  go  it  is  not  conservative.  Radicalism, 
indeed,  is  its  child.  Political  and  religious  radicalism 
brought  the  Pilgrims  to  New  England,  the  Quakers 
to  Pennsylvania;  political  and  economic  radicalism 
made  the  Revolution  against  the  will  of  American  con 
servatives;  political  and  social  radicalism  made  the 
Civil  War  inevitable  and  gave  it  moral  earnestness. 
Radicalism,  whether  you  like  it  or  not,  is  much  more 
American  than  what  some  people  mean  by  "Ameri 
canism"  to-day.  And  its  bitterest  opponents  in  our 
times  would  quite  certainly  have  become  Nova  Scotian 
exiles  if  they  had  been  alive  and  likeminded  in  1783. 

Nor  is  this  American  tradition  impeccable  in  the 
political  ideas,  the  literary  ideals,  the  social  customs 
it  has  given  us.  We  must  admit  a  rampant  individ 
ualism  in  our  political  practices  which  is  in  the  very 
best  Anglo-American  tradition,  and  yet  by  no  means 
favorable  to  cooperative  government.  We  admit  also 
more  Puritanism  in  our  standard  literature  than  art 
can  well  digest;  and  more  sentiment  than  is  good  for 
us;  nor  is  it  probable  that  the  traditions  and  the 
conventions  which  govern  American  family  life  are 
superior  to  their  European  equivalents.  We  should 
welcome  (I  do  not  say  that  we  do)  liberalizing,  broad- 


The  American   Tradition  87 

ening,  enriching  influences  from  other  traditions.  And 
whether  we  have  welcomed  them  or  not,  they  have 
come,  and  to  our  great  benefit.  But  to  graft  upon 
the  plant  is  different  from  trying  to  pull  up  the  roots. 

We  want  better  arguments  than  the  fear  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  domination  before  the  root  pulling  begins.  We 
wish  to  know  what  is  to  be  planted.  We  desire  to 
be  convinced  that  the  virtue  has  gone  out  of  the  old 
stock.  We  want  examples  of  civilized  nations  that 
have  profited  by  borrowing  traditions  wholesale,  or  by 
inventing  them.  We  wish  to  know  if  a  cultural,  a 
literary  sans-culottism  is  possible,  except  with  chaos 
as  a  goal.  Most  of  all,  we  expect  to  fight  for  and  to 
hold  our  Anglo-American  heritage. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  discontent  with  our  own 
ultimately  English  tradition  has  expressed  itself  by  a 
kind  of  Freudian  transformation  in  anti-English  senti 
ment.  Every  vigorous  nation  strains  and  struggles  with 
its  tradition,  like  a  growing  boy  with  his  clothes,  and 
this  is  particularly  true  of  new  nations  with  old  tradi 
tions  behind  them.  Our  pains  are  growing  pains — a 
malady  we  have  suffered  from  since  the  early  eighteenth 
century  at  the  latest.  Tradition,  our  own  tradition, 
pinches  us;  but  you  cannot  punch  tradition  for  pinch 
ing  you,  or  call  it  names  to  its  face,  especially  if  it  proves 
to  be  your  father's  tradition,  or  your  next-door  neigh 
bor's.  Therefore,  since  that  now  dim  day  when  the 
Colonies  acquired  a  self-consciousness  of  their  own, 
many  good  Americans  have  chosen  England  and  the 
English  to  symbolize  whatever  irked  them  in  their 


88  On  the  American  Tradition 

own  tradition.  It  is  from  England  and  the  English 
that  we  have  felt  ourselves  growing  away,  from  which 
we  had  to  grow  away  in  order  to  be  ourselves  and  not 
a  shadow — imitators,  second-bests,  Colonials.  England 
and  the  English  have  had  our  vituperation  whenever 
the  need  to  be  American  has  been  greatest.  And  when 
an  English  government  like  Palmerston's,  or  Salis 
bury's,  or  Lloyd  George's,  offends  some  group  or  race 
among  us,  a  lurking  need  to  assert  our  individuality, 
or  prove  that  we  are  not  Colonials,  leads  thousands 
more  to  join  in  giving  the  lion's  tail  an  extra  twist. 

This  may  be  unfortunate,  but  it  argues  curiously 
enough  respect  and  affection  rather  than  the  reverse, 
and  it  is  very  human.  It  is  a  fact,  like  growing,  and 
is  likely  to  continue  until  we  are  fully  grown.  It  will 
reassert  itself  vehemently  until  upon  our  English  tra 
dition  we  shall  have  built  an  American  civilization  as 
definitely  crystallized,  a  literature  as  rich  and  self- 
sufficing,  as  that  of  France  and  England  to-day.  Three- 
quarters  of  our  national  genius  went  into  the  creating 
of  our  political  system.  Three-quarters  of  our  national 
genius  since  has  gone  into  the  erecting  of  our  economic 
system.  Here  we  are  independent — and  thick  skinned. 
But  a  national  civilization  and  a  national  literature 
take  more  time  to  complete. 

Cool  minds  were  prepared  for  a  little  tail-twisting 
after  the  great  war,  even  though  they  could  not  foresee 
the  unfortunate  Irish  situation  in  which  a  British 
government  seemed  determined  to  make  itself  as  un- 
English  as  possible.  If  there  had  not  been  the  patriotic 


The  American  Tradition  89 

urge  to  assert  our  essential  Americanism  more  strongly 
than  ever,  there  still  would  have  been  a  reaction  against 
all  the  pledging  and  the  handshaking,  the  pother  about 
blood  and  water,  the  purple  patches  in  every  newspaper 
asserting  Anglo-Saxonism  against  the  world.  I  remem 
ber  my  own  nervousness  when,  in  1918,  after  the  best 
part  of  a  year  in  England,  in  England's  darkest  days, 
I  came  back  full  of  admiration  for  the  pluck  of  all 
England  and  the  enlightenment  of  her  best  minds  in 
the  great  struggle,  to  hear  men  who  knew  little  of 
England  orating  of  enduring  friendship,  and  to  read 
writers  who  had  merely  read  of  England,  descanting 
of  her  virtues.  I  felt,  and  many  felt,  that  excess  of 
ignorant  laudation  which  spells  certain  reaction  into 
ignorant  dispraise.  No  wonder  that  Americans  whose 
parents  happened  to  be  Germans,  Italians,  Jews,  or 
Irish  grew  weary  of  hearing  of  the  essential  virtues 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  There  never  was  such  a 
race.  It  was  not  even  English  blood,  but  English  in 
stitutions  that  created  America;  but  Liberty  Loan  ora 
tors  had  no  time  to  make  fine  distinctions  of  that  kind. 
They  talked,  and  even  while  the  cheers  were  ringing 
and  the  money  rolled  in  dissent  raised  its  tiny  head. 
Dissent  was  to  be  expected;  antagonism  against  a 
tradition  made  by  English  minds  and  perpetuated  in 
English  was  natural  after  a  war  in  which  not  merely 
nationalism,  but  also  every  racial  instinct,  has  been 
quickened  and  made  sensitive.  But  tout  comprendre, 
c'est  tout  pardonner,  is  only  partly  true  in  this  instance. 
We  should  understand,  and  be  tolerant  with,  the  strain- 


90  On  the  American   Tradition 

ings  against  tradition  of  folk  to  whom  it  is  still  partly 
alien;  we  should  diagnose  our  own  growing  pains  and 
not  take  them  too  seriously.  Nevertheless,  the  better 
more  violent  movements  of  race  and  national  prejudice 
are  understood,  the  less  readily  can  they  be  pardoned, 
if  by  pardon  one  means  easy  tolerance. 

It  is  not  inconceivable  that  we  shall  have  to  face 
squarely  a  split  between  those  who  prefer  the  Ameri 
can  tradition  and  those  who  do  not,  although  where 
the  cleavage  line  would  run,  whether  between  races 
or  classes,  is  past  guessing.  There  are  among  us  appar 
ently  men  and  women  who  would  risk  wars,  external 
or  internal,  in  order  to  hasten  the  discordant  day; 
although  just  what  they  expect  as  a  result,  whether 
an  Irish-German  state  organized  by  German  efficiency 
and  officered  by  graduates  of  Tammany  Hall,  or  a 
pseudo-Russian  communism,  is  not  yet  clear.  In  any 
case,  the  time  is  near  when  whoever  calls  himself 
American  will  have  to  take  his  stand  and  do  more 
thinking,  perhaps,  than  was  necessary  in  1917.  He 
will  need  to  know  what  tradition  is,  what  his  own  con 
sists  of,  and  what  he  would  do  without  it.  He  will  need 
especially  to  rid  himself  of  such  simple  and  fallacious 
ideas  as  that  what  was  good  enough  for  his  grandfather 
is  good  enough  for  him;  or  that,  as  some  of  our  more 
reputable  newspapers  profess  to  think,  the  Constitution 
has  taken  the  place  once  held  by  the  Bible,  and  con 
tains  the  whole  duty  of  man  and  all  that  is  necessary 
for  his  welfare.  He  will  need  to  think  less  of  100  per 
cent  Americanism,  which,  as  it  is  ^commonly  used, 


The  American   Tradition  91 

means  not  to  think  at  all,  and  more  of  how  he  himself 
is  molding  American  tradition  for  the  generation  that  is 
to  follow.  If  he  is  not  to  be  a  pawn  merely  in  the 
struggle  for  American  unity,  he  must  think  more  clearly 
and  deeply  than  has  been  his  habit  in  the  past. 

But  whatever  happens  in  America  (and  after  the 
sad  experiences  of  prophets  in  the  period  of  war  and 
reconstruction,  who  would  prophesy),  let  us  cease  abus 
ing  England  whenever  we  have  indigestion  in  our  own 
body  politic.  It  is  seemingly  inevitable  that  the  writers 
of  vindictive  editorials  should  know  little  more  of 
England  as  she  is  to-day  than  of  Russia  or  the  Chinese 
Republic;  inevitable,  apparently,  that  for  them  the 
Irish  policy  of  the  Tory  group  in  Parliament,  Indian 
unrest,  and  Lloyd  George,  are  all  that  one  needs  to 
known  about  a  country  whose  liberal  experiments  in 
industrial  democracy  since  the  war,  and  whose  courage 
in  reconstruction,  may  well  make  us  hesitate  in  dis 
praise.  But  it  is  not  inevitable  that  Americans  who 
are  neither  headline  and  editorial  writers,  nor  im 
passioned  orators,  regardless  of  facts,  should  continue 
to  damn  the  English  because  their  ancestors  and  ours 
founded  America. 


Back  to  Nature 

No  one  tendency  in  life  as  we  live  it  in  America  to-day 
is  more  characteristic  than  the  impulse,  as  recurrent 
as  summer,  to  take  to  the  woods.  Sometimes  it  dis 
guises  itself  under  the  name  of  science;  sometimes  it 
is  mingled  with  hunting  and  the  desire  to  kill;  often 
it  is  sentimentalized  and  leads  strings  of  gaping  "stu 
dents"  bird-hunting  through  the  wood  lot;  and  again 
it  perilously  resembles  a  desire  to  get  back  from  civi 
lization  and  go  "on  the  loose."  Say  your  worst  of  it, 
still  the  fact  remains  that  more  Americans  go  back 
to  nature  for  one  reason  or  another  annually  than 
any  civilized  men  before  them.  And  more  Americans, 
I  fancy,  are  studying  nature  in  clubs  or  public  schools 
— or,  in  summer  camps  and  the  Boy  Scouts,  imitating 
nature's  creatures,  the  Indian  and  the  pioneer — than 
even  statistics  could  make  believable. 

What  is  the  cause?  In  life,  it  is  perhaps  some  sur 
vival  of  the  pioneering  instinct,  spending  itself  upon 
fishing,  or  bird-hunting,  or  trail  hiking,  much  as  the 
fight  instinct  leads  us  to  football,  or  the  hunt  instinct 
sends  every  dog  sniffing  at  dawn  through  the  streets 
of  his  town.  Not  every  one  is  thus  atavistic,  if  this 
be  atavism;  not  every  American  is  sensitive  to  spruce 
spires,  or  the  hermit  thrush's  chant,  or  white  water 
in  a  forest  gorge,  or  the  meadow  lark  across  the 

92 


Back  to  Nature  93 

frosted  fields.  Naturally.  The  surprising  fact  is  that 
in  a  bourgeois  civilization  like  ours,  so  many  are 
affected. 

And  yet  what  a  criterion  nature  love  or  nature  in 
difference  is.  It  seems  that  if  I  can  try  a  man  by 
a  silent  minute  in  the  pines,  the  view  of  a  jay  pirating 
through  the  bushes,  spring  odors,  or  December  flush 
on  evening  snow,  I  can  classify  him  by  his  reactions. 
Just  where  I  do  not  know;  for  certainly  I  do  not  put 
him  beyond  the  pale  if  his  response  is  not  as  mine. 
And  yet  he  will  differ,  I  feel  sure,  in  more  significant 
matters.  He  is  not  altogether  of  my  world.  Nor 
does  he  enter  into  this  essay.  There  are  enough  with 
out  him,  and  of  every  class.  In  the  West,  the  very 
day  laborer  pitches  his  camp  in  the  mountains  for  his 
two  weeks'  holiday.  In  the  East  and  Middle  West, 
every  pond  with  a  fringe  of  hemlocks,  or  hill  view 
by  a  trolley  line,  or  strip  of  ocean  beach,  has  its 
cluster  of  bungalows  where  the  proletariat  perform 
their  villeggiatura  as  the  Italian  aristocracy  did  in 
the  days  of  the  Renaissance.  Patently  the  impulse  ex 
ists,  and  counts  for  something  here  in  America. 

It  counts  for  something,  too,  in  American  literature. 
Since  our  writing  ceased  being  colonial  English  and 
began  to  reflect  a  race  in  the  making,  the  note  of  woods- 
longing  has  been  so  insistent  that  one  wonders  whether 
here  is  not  to  be  found  at  last  the  characteristic  "trait" 
that  we  have  all  been  patriotically  seeking. 

I  do  not  limit  myself  in  this  statement  to  the  pro 
fessed  "nature  writers"  of  whom  we  have  bred  far 


94  On  the  American   Tradition 

more  than  any  other  race  with  which  I  am  familiar. 
In  the  list — which  I  shall  not  attempt — of  the  greatest 
American  writers,  one  cannot  fail  to  include  Emerson, 
Hawthorne,  Thoreau,  Cooper,  Lowell,  and  Whitman. 
And  every  one  of  these  men  was  vitally  concerned 
with  nature,  and  some  were  obsessed  by  it.  Lowell 
was  a  scholar  and  man  of  the  world,  urban  there 
fore;  but  his  poetry  is  more  enriched  by  its  homely 
New  England  background  than  by  its  European  polish. 
Cooper's  ladies  and  gentlemen  are  puppets  merely,  his 
plots  melodrama;  it  is  the  woods  he  knew,  and  the 
creatures  of  the  woods,  Deerslayer  and  Chingachgook, 
that  preserve  his  books.  Whitman  made  little  distinc 
tion  between  nature  and  human  nature,  perhaps  too 
little.  But  read  "Out  of  the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rock 
ing"  or  "The  Song  of  the  Redwood-Tree,"  and  see  how 
keen  and  how  vital  was  his  instinct  for  native  soil. 
As  for  Hawthorne,  you  could  make  a  text-book  on 
nature  study  from  his  "Note-Books."  He  was  an 
imaginative  moralist  first  of  all;  but  he  worked  out 
his  visions  in  terms  of  New  England  woods  and  hills. 
So  did  Emerson.  The  day  was  "not  wholly  profane" 
for  him  when  he  had  "given  heed  to  some  natural 
object."  Thoreau  needs  no  proving.  He  is  at  the 
forefront  of  all  field  and  forest  lovers  in  all  languages 
and  times. 

These  are  the  greater  names.  The  lesser  are  as 
leaves  in  the  forest:  Audubon,  Burroughs,  Muir,  Clar 
ence  King,  Lanier,  Robert  Frost,  and  many  more — 
the  stream  broadening  and  shallowing  through  literary 


Back  to  Nature  95 

scientists  and  earnest  forest  lovers  to  romantic  "nature 
fakers,"  literary  sportsmen,  amiable  students,  and  tens 
of  thousands  of  teachers  inculcating  this  American  ten 
dency  in  another  generation.  The  phenomenon  asks 
for  an  explanation.  It  is  more  than  a  category  of 
American  literature  that  I  am  presenting;  it  is  an 
American  trait. 

The  explanation  I  wish  to  proffer  in  this  essay  may 
sound  fantastical;  most  explanations  that  explain  any 
thing  usually  do — at  first.  I  believe  that  this  vast  rush 
of  nature  into  American  literature  is  more  than  a  mere 
reflection  of  a  liking  for  the  woods.  It  represents  a 
search  for  a  tradition,  and  its  capture. 

Good  books,  like  well-built  houses,  must  have  tradi 
tion  behind  them.  The  Homers  and  Shakespeares  and 
Goethes  spring  from  rich  soil  left  by  dead  centuries; 
they  are  like  native  trees  that  grow  so  well  nowhere 
else.  The  little  writers — hacks  who  sentimentalize  to 
the  latest  order,  and  display  their  plot  novelties  like 
bargains  on  an  advertising  page — are  just  as  traditional. 
The  only  difference  is  that  their  tradition  goes  back 
to  books  instead  of  life.  Middle-sized  authors — the 
very  good  and  the  probably  enduring — are  successful 
largely  because  they  have  gripped  a  tradition  and  fol 
lowed  it  through  to  contemporary  life.  This  is  what 
Thackeray  did  in  "Vanity  Fair,"  Howells  in  "The  Rise 
of  Silas  Lapham,"  and  Mrs.  Wharton  in  "The  House 
of  Mirth."  But  the  back-to-nature  books — both  the 
sound  ones  and  those  shameless  exposures  of  the  private 
emotions  of  ground  hogs  and  turtles  that  call  themselves 


96  On  the  American  Tradition 

nature  books — are  the  most  traditional  of  all.  For  they 
plunge  directly  into  what  might  be  called  the  adven 
tures  of  the  American  sub-consciousness. 

It  is  the  sub-consciousness  that  carries  tradition  into 
literature.  That  curious  reservoir  where  forgotten  ex 
periences  lie  waiting  in  every  man's  mind,  as  vivid 
as  on  the  day  of  first  impression,  is  the  chief  concern 
of  psychologists  nowadays.  But  it  has  never  yet  had 
due  recognition  from  literary  criticism.  If  the  sub- 
consciousness  is  well  stocked,  a  man  writes  truly,  his 
imagination  is  vibrant  with  human  experience,  he  sets 
his  own  humble  observation  against  a  background  of 
all  he  has  learned  and  known  and  forgotten  of  civiliza 
tion.  If  it  is  under-populated,  if  he  has  done  little,  felt 
little,  known  little  of  the  traditional  experiences  of 
the  intellect,  he  writes  thinly.  He  can  report  what 
he  sees,  but  it  is  hard  for  him  to  create.  It  was 
Chaucer's  rich  sub-consciousness  that  turned  his  sim 
ple  little  story  of  Chauntecleer  into  a  comment  upon 
humanity.  Other  men  had  told  that  story — and  made 
it  scarcely  more  than  trivial.  It  is  the  promptings 
of  forgotten  memories  in  the  sub-consciousness  that 
give  to  a  simple  statement  the  force  of  old,  un 
happy  things,  that  keep  thoughts  true  to  experience, 
and  test  fancy  by  life.  The  sub-consciousness  is  the 
governor  of  the  waking  brain.  Tradition — which  is 
just  man's  memory  of  man — flows  through  it  like  an 
underground  river  from  which  rise  the  springs  of 
every-day  thinking.  If  there  is  anything  remarkable 


Back  to  Nature  97 

about  a  book,  look  to  the  sub-consciousness  of  the 
writer  and  study  the  racial  tradition  that  it  bears. 

Now,  I  am  far  from  proposing  to  analyze  the  Ameri 
can  sub-consciousness.  No  man  can  define  it.  But 
of  this  much  I  am  certain.  The  American  habit  of 
going  "back  to  nature"  means  that  in  our  sub-con 
sciousness  nature  is  peculiarly  active.  We  react  to 
nature  as  does  no  other  race.  We  are  the  descendants 
of  pioneers — all  of  us.  And  if  we  have  not  inherited 
a  memory  of  pioneering  experiences,  at  least  we  possess 
inherited  tendencies  and  desires.  The  impulse  that 
drove  Boone  westward  may  nowadays  do  no  more 
than  send  some  young  Boone  canoeing  on  Temagami, 
or  push  him  up  Marcy  or  Shasta  to  inexplicable  hap 
piness  on  the  top.  But  the  drive  is  there.  And  fur 
thermore,  nature  is  still  strange  in  America.  Even 
now  the  wilderness  is  far  from  no  American  city. 
Birds,  plants,  trees,  even  animals  have  not,  as  in 
Europe,  been  absorbed  into  the  common  knowledge 
of  the  race.  There  are  discoveries  everywhere  for 
those  who  can  make  them.  Nature,  indeed,  is  vivid 
in  a  surprising  number  of  American  brain  cells,  mark 
ing  them  with  a  deep  and  endurable  impress.  And 
our  flood  of  nature  books  has  served  to  increase  her 
power. 

It  was  never  so  with  the  European  traditions  that 
we  brought  to  America  with  us.  That  is  why  no  one 
reads  early  American  books.  They  are  pallid,  ill- 
nourished,  because  their  traditions  are  pallid.  They 


98  On  the  American   Tradition 

drew  upon  the  least  active  portion  of  the  American 
sub-consciousness,  and  reflect  memories  not  of  experi 
ence,  contact,  live  thought,  but  of  books.  Even  Wash 
ington  Irving,  our  first  great  author,  is  not  free  from 
this  indictment.  If,  responding  to  some  obscure  drift 
of  his  race  towards  humor  and  the  short  story,  he 
had  not  ripened  his  Augustan  inheritance  upon  an 
American  hillside,  he,  too,  would  by  now  seem  juice- 
less,  withered,  like  a  thousand  cuttings  from  English 
stock  planted  in  forgotten  pages  of  his  period.  It  was 
not  until  the  end  of  our  colonial  age  and  the  rise  of 
democracy  towards  Jackson's  day,  that  the  rupture 
with  our  English  background  became  sufficiently  com 
plete  to  make  us  fortify  pale  memories  of  home  by  a 
search  for  fresher,  more  vigorous  tradition. 

We  have  been  searching  ever  since,  and  many  emi 
nent  critics  think  that  we  have  still  failed  to  establish 
American  literature  upon  American  soil.  The  old  tradi 
tions,  of  course,  were  essential.  Not  even  the  most 
self-sufficient  American  hopes  to  establish  a  brand-new 
culture.  The  problem  has  been  to  domesticate  Europe, 
not  to  get  rid  of  her.  But  the  old  stock  needed  a  graft, 
just  as  an  old  fruit  tree  needs  a  graft.  It  requires 
a  new  tradition.  We  found  a  tradition  in  New  Eng 
land;  and  then  New  England  was  given  over  to  the 
alien  and  her  traditions  became  local  or  historical 
merely.  We  found  another  in  border  life;  and  then 
the  Wild  West  reached  the  Pacific  and  vanished.  Time 
and  again  we  have  been  flung  back  upon  our  English 
sources,  and  forced  to  imitate  a  literature  sprung  from 


Back  to  Nature  99 

a  riper  soil.  Of  course,  this  criticism,  as  it  stands,  is 
too  sweeping.  It  neglects  Mark  Twain  and  the  tradi 
tion  of  the  American  boy;  it  neglects  Walt  Whitman 
and  the  literature  of  free  and  turbulent  democracy; 
it  neglects  Longfellow  and  Poe  and  that  romantic  tra 
dition  of  love  and  beauty  common  to  all  Western  races. 
But,  at  least,  it  makes  one  understand  why  the  Ameri 
can  writer  has  passionately  sought  anything  that  would 
put  an  American  quality  into  his  transplanted  style. 

He  has  been  very  successful  in  local  color.  But  then 
local  color  is  local.  It  is  a  minor  art.  In  the  field 
of  human  nature  he  has  fought  a  doubtful  battle.  An 
occasional  novel  has  broken  through  into  regions  where 
it  is  possible  to  be  utterly  American  even  while  writing 
English.  Poems  too  have  followed.  But  here  lie  our 
great  failures.  I  do  not  speak  of  the  "great  American 
novel,"  yet  to  come.  I  refer  to  the  absence  of  a  school 
of  American  fiction,  or  poetry,  or  drama,  that  has 
linked  itself  to  any  tradition  broader  than  the  romance 
of  the  colonies,  New  England  of  the  'forties,  or  the 
East  Side  of  New  York.  The  men  who  most  often 
write  for  all  America  are  mediocre.  They  strike  no 
deeper  than  a  week-old  interest  in  current  activity. 
They  aim  to  hit  the  minute  because  they  are  shrewd 
enough  to  see  that  for  "all  America"  there  is  very 
little  continuity  just  now  between  one  minute  and  the 
next.  The  America  they  write  for  is  contemptuous 
of  tradition,  although  worshipping  convention,  which 
is  the  tradition  of  the  ignorant.  The  men  who  write 
for  a  fit  audience  though  few  are  too  often  local  or 


ioo  On  the  American   Tradition 

archaic,  narrow  or  European,  by  necessity  if  not  by 
choice. 

And  ever  since  we  began  to  incur  the  condescension 
of  foreigners  by  trying  to  be  American,  we  have  been 
conscious  of  this  weak-rootedness  in  our  literature  and 
trying  to  remedy  it.  This  is  why  our  flood  of  nature 
books  for  a  century  is  so  significant.  They  may  seem 
peculiar  instruments  for  probing  tradition — particularly 
the  sentimental  ones.  The  critic  has  not  yet  admitted 
some  of  the  heartiest  among  them — Audubon's  sketches 
of  pioneer  life,  for  example — into  literature  at  all. 
And  yet,  unless  I  am  mightily  mistaken,  they  are  signs 
of  convalescence  as  clearly  as  they  are  symptoms  of 
our  disease.  These  United  States,  of  course,  are  infi 
nitely  more  important  than  the  plot  of  mother  earth 
upon  which  they  have  been  erected.  The  intellectual 
background  that  we*  have  inherited  from  Europe  is 
more  significant  than  the  moving  spirit  of  woods  and 
soil  and  waters  here.  The  graft,  in  truth,  is  less  valu 
able  than  the  tree  upon  which  it  is  grafted.  Yet  it 
determines  the  fruit.  So  with  the  books  of  our  nature 
lovers.  They  represent  a  passionate  attempt  to  accli 
matize  the  breed.  Thoreau  has  been  one  of  our  most 
original  writers.  He  and  his  multitudinous  followers, 
wise  and  foolish,  have  helped  establish  us  in  our  new 
soil. 

I  may  seem  to  exaggerate  the  services  of  a  group 
of  writers  who,  after  all,  can  show  but  one  great  name, 
Thoreau's.  I  do  not  think  so,  for  if  the  heart  of  the 
nature  lover  is  sometimes  more  active  than  his  head, 


Back  to  Nature  i<)j 

the  earth  intimacies  he  gives  us  are  vital  to  literature 
in  a  very  practical  sense.  Thanks  to  the  modern  sci 
ence  of  geography,  we  are  beginning  to  understand 
the  profound  and  powerful  influence  of  physical  en 
vironment  upon  men.  The  geographer  can  tell  you 
why  Charleston  was  aristocratic,  why  New  York  is 
hurried  and  nervous,  why  Chicago  is  self-confident.  He 
can  guess  at  least  why  in  old  communities,  like 
Hardy's  Wessex  or  the  North  of  France,  the  inhabitants 
of  villages  not  ten  miles  apart  will  differ  in  tempera 
ment  and  often  in  temper,  hill  town  varying  from 
lowland  village  beneath  it  sometimes  more  than  Kan 
sas  City  from  Minneapolis.  He  knows  that  the  old 
elemental  forces — wind,  water,  fire,  and  earth — still 
mold  men's  thoughts  and  lives  a  hundred  times  more 
than  they  guess,  even  when  pavements,  electric  lights, 
tight  roofs,  and  artificial  heat  seem  to  make  nature 
only  a  name.  He  knows  that  the  sights  and  sounds 
and  smells  about  us,  clouds,  songs,  and  wind  murmur- 
ings,  rain-washed  earth,  and  fruit  trees  blossoming,  en 
ter  into  our  sub-consciousness  with  a  power  but  seldom 
appraised.  Prison  life,  factory  service  long  continued, 
a  clerk's  stool,  a  housewife's  day-long  duties — these 
things  stunt  and  transform  the  human  animal  as  noth 
ing  else,  because  of  all  experiences  they  most  restrict, 
most  impoverish  the  natural  environment.  And  it  is 
the  especial  function  of  nature  books  to  make  vivid 
and  warm  and  sympathetic  our  background  of  nature. 
They  make  conscious  our  sub-conscious  dependence 
upon  earth  that  bore  us.  They  do  not  merely  inform 


IO2  On  the  American   Tradition 

(there  the  scientist  may  transcend  them),  they  enrich 
the  subtle  relationship  between  us  and  our  environment. 
Move  a  civilization  and  its  literature  from  one  hemi 
sphere  to  another,  and  their  adapting,  adjusting  services 
become  most  valuable.  Men  like  Thoreau  are  worth 
more  than  we  have  ever  guessed. 

No  one  has  ever  written  more  honest  books  than 
Thoreau's  "Walden,"  his  "Autumn,"  "Summer,"  and 
the  rest.  There  is  not  one  literary  flourish  in  the  whole 
of  them,  although  they  are  done  with  consummate 
literary  care;  nothing  but  honest,  if  not  always  accu 
rate,  observation  of  the  world  of  hill-slopes,  waves, 
flowers,  birds,  and  beasts,  and  honest,  shrewd  philoso 
phizing  as  to  what  it  all  meant  for  him,  an  American. 
Here  is  a  man  content  to  take  a  walk,  fill  his  mind 
with  observation,  and  then  come  home  to  think.  Re 
peat  the  walk,  repeat  or  vary  the  observation,  change 
or  expand  the  thought,  and  you  have  Thoreau.  No 
wonder  he  brought  his  first  edition  home,  not  seriously 
depleted,  and  made  his  library  of  it!  Thoreau  needs 
excerpting  to  be  popular.  Most  nature  books  do.  But 
not  to  be  valuable! 

For  see  what  this  queer  genius  was  doing.  Lovingly, 
laboriously,  and  sometimes  a  little  tediously,  he  was 
studying  his  environment.  For  some  generations  his 
ancestors  had  lived  on  a  new  soil,  too  busy  in  squeezing 
life  from  it  to  be  practically  aware  of  its  differences. 
They  and  the  rest  had  altered  Massachusetts.  Massa 
chusetts  had  altered  them.  Why?  To  what?  The 
answer  is  not  yet  ready.  But  here  is  one  descendant 


Back  to  Nature  103 

who  will  know  at  least  what  Massachusetts  is — wave, 
wind,  soil,  and  the  life  therein  and  thereon.  He  be 
gins  humbly  with  the  little  things;  but  humanly,  not 
as  the  out-and-out  scientist  goes  to  work,  to  classify 
or  to  study  the  narrower  laws  of  organic  development; 
or  romantically  as  the  sentimentalist,  who  intones  his 
"Ah! "  at  the  sight  of  dying  leaves  or  the  cocoon  becom 
ing  moth.  It  is  all  human,  and  yet  all  intensely  prac 
tical  with  Thoreau.  He  envies  the  Indian  not  because 
he  is  "wild,"  or  "free,"  or  any  such  nonsense,  but  for 
his  instinctive  adaptations  to  his  background, — because 
nature  has  become  traditional,  stimulative  with  him. 
And  simply,  almost  naively,  he  sets  down  what  he  has 
discovered.  The  land  I  live  in  is  like  this  or  that; 
such  and  such  life  lives  in  it;  and  this  is  what  it  all 
means  for  me,  the  transplanted  European,  for  us,  Amer 
icans,  who  have  souls  to  shape  and  characters  to  mold 
in  a  new  environment,  under  influences  subtler  than 
we  guess.  "I  make  it  my  business  to  extract  from 
Nature  whatever  nutriment  she  can  furnish  me,  though 
at  the  risk  of  endless  iteration.  I  milk  the  sky  and 
the  earth."  And  again:  "Surely  it  is  a  defect  in  our 
Bible  that  it  is  not  truly  ours,  but  a  Hebrew  Bible. 
The  most  pertinent  illustrations  for  us  are  to  be  drawn 
not  from  Egypt  or  Babylonia,  but  from  New  England. 
Natural  objects  and  phenomena  are  the  original  sym 
bols  or  types  which  express  our  thoughts  and  feelings. 
Yet  American  scholars,  having  little  or  no  root  in  the 
soil,  commonly  strive  with  all  their  might  to  confine 
themselves  to  the  imported  symbols  alone.  All  the 


IO4  On  the  American   Tradition 

true  growth  and  experience,  the  living  speech,  they 
would  fain  reject  as  'Americanisms.'  It  is  the  old 
error  which  the  church,  the  state,  the  school,  ever  com 
mit,  choosing  darkness  rather  than  light,  holding  fast 
to  the  old  and  to  tradition.  When  I  really  know  that 
our  river  pursues  a  serpentine  course  to  the  Merrimac, 
shall  I  continue  to  describe  it  by  referring  to  some 
other  river,  no  older  than  itself,  which  is  like  it,  and 
call  it  a  meander?  It  is  no  more  meandering  than 
the  Meander  is  musketaquiding." 

This  for  Thoreau  was  going  back  to  nature.  Our 
historians  of  literature  who  cite  him  as  an  example 
of  how  to  be  American  without  being  strenuous,  as  an 
instance  of  leisure  nobly  earned,  are  quite  wrong.  If 
any  man  has  striven  to  make  us  at  home  in  America, 
it  is  Thoreau.  He  gave  his  life  to  it;  and  in  some 
measure  it  is  thanks  to  him  that  with  most  Americans 
you  reach  intimacy  most  quickly  by  talking  about  "the 
woods." 

Thoreau  gave  to  this  American  tendency  the  touch 
of  genius  and  the  depth  of  real  thought.  After  his 
day  the  "back-to-nature"  idea  became  more  popular 
and  perhaps  more  picturesque.  Our  literature  becomes 
more  and  more  aware  of  an  American  background. 
Bobolinks  and  thrushes  take  the  place  of  skylarks; 
sumach  and  cedar  begin  to  be  as  familiar  as  heather 
and  gorse;  forests,  prairies,  a  clear,  high  sky,  a  snowy 
winter,  a  summer  of  thunderstorms,  drive  out  the  misty 
England  which,  since  the  days  of  Cynewulf,  our  an 
cestors  had  seen  in  the  mind's  eye  while  they  were 


Back  to  Nature  105 

writing.  Nature  literature  becomes  a  category.  Men 
make  their  reputations  by  means  of  it. 

No  one  has  yet  catalogued — so  far  as  I  am  aware 
— the  vast  collection  of  back-to-nature  books  that  fol 
lowed  Thoreau.  No  one  has  ever  seriously  criticized 
it,  except  Mr.  Roosevelt,  who  with  characteristic  vigor 
of  phrase,  stamped  "nature-faking"  on  its  worser  half. 
But  every  one  reads  in  it.  Indeed,  the  popularity  of 
such  writing  has  been  so  great  as  to  make  us  distrust 
its  serious  literary  value.  And  yet,  viewed  interna 
tionally,  there  are  few  achievements  in  American  litera 
ture  so  original.  I  will  not  say  that  John  Muir  and 
John  Burroughs,  upon  whom  Thoreau's  mantle  fell, 
have  written  great  books.  Probably  not.  Certainly 
it  is  too  soon  to  say.  But  when  you  have  gathered  the 
names  of  Gilbert  White,  Jeffries,  Fabre,  Maeterlinck, 
and  in  slightly  different  genres,  Izaak  Walton,  Hudson, 
and  Kipling  from  various  literatures  you  will  find  few 
others  abroad  to  list  with  ours.  Nor  do  our  men  owe 
one  jot  or  tittle  of  their  inspiration  to  individuals  on 
the  other  side  of  the  water. 

Locally,  too,  these  books  are  more  noteworthy  than 
may  at  first  appear.  They  are  curiously  passionate, 
and  passion  in  American  literature  since  the  Civil  War 
is  rare.  I  do  not  mean  sentiment,  or  romance,  or  erot 
icism.  I  mean  such  passion  as  Wordsworth  felt  for 
his  lakes,  Byron  (even  when  most  Byronic)  for  the 
ocean,  the  author  of  "The  Song  of  Roland"  for  his 
Franks.  Muir  loved  the  Yosemite  as  a  man  might 
love  a  woman.  Every  word  he  wrote  of  the  Sierras 


106  On  the  American   Tradition 

is  touched  with  intensity.  Hear  him  after  a  day  on 
Alaskan  peaks:  "Dancing  down  the  mountain  to  camp, 
my  mind  glowing  like  the  sunbeaten  glaciers,  I  found 
the  Indians  seated  around  a  good  fire,  entirely  happy 
now  that  the  farthest  point  of  the  journey  was  safely 
reached  and  the  long,  dark  storm  was  cleared  away. 
How  hopefully,  peacefully  bright  that  night  were  the 
stars  in  the  frosty  sky,  and  how  impressive  was  the 
thunder  of  icebergs,  rolling,  swelling,  reverberating 
through  the  solemn  stillness!  I  was  too  happy  to 
sleep." 

Such  passion,  and  often  such  style,  is  to  be  found 
in  all  these  books  when  they  are  good  books.  Com 
pare  a  paragraph  or  two  of  the  early  Burroughs  on 
his  birch-clad  lake  country,  or  Thoreau  upon  Concord 
pines,  with  the  "natural  history  paragraph"  that  Eng 
lish  magazines  used  to  publish,  and  you  will  feel  it. 
Compare  any  of  the  lesser  nature  books  of  the  mid- 
nineteenth  century — Clarence  King's  "Mountaineering 
in  the  Sierras,"  for  example — with  the  current  novel 
writing  of  the  period  and  you  will  feel  the  greater 
sincerity.  A  passion  for  nature!  Except  the  New 
England  passion  for  ideals,  Whitman's  passion  for  de 
mocracy,  and  Poe's  lonely  devotion  to  beauty,  I  some 
times  think  that  this  is  the  only  great  passion  that 
has  found  its  way  into  American  literature. 

Hence  the  "nature  fakers."  The  passion  of  one 
generation  becomes  the  sentiment  of  the  next.  And 
sentiment  is  easily  capitalized.  The  individual  can 
be  stirred  by  nature  as  she  is.  A  hermit  thrush  singing 


Back  to  Nature  107 

in  moonlight  above  a  Catskill  clove  will  move  him. 
But  the  populace  will  require  something  more  sensa 
tional.  To  the  sparkling  water  of  truth  must  be  added 
the  syrup  of  sentiment  and  the  cream  of  romance. 
Mr.  Kipling,  following  ancient  traditions  of  the  Orient, 
gave  personalities  to  his  animals  so  that  stories  might 
be  made  from  them.  Mr.  Long,  Mr.  Roberts,  Mr. 
London,  Mr.  Thompson-Seton,  and  the  rest,  have  told 
stories  about  animals  so  that  the  American  interest 
in  nature  might  be  exploited.  The  difference  is  essen 
tial.  If  the  "Jungle  Books"  teach  anything  it  is  the 
moral  ideals  of  the  British  Empire.  But  our  nature 
romancers — a  fairer  term  than  "fakers,"  since  they  do 
not  willingly  "fake" — teach  the  background  and  tradi 
tion  of  our  soil.  In  the  process  they  inject  sentiment, 
giving  us  the  noble  desperation  of  the  stag,  the  startling 
wolf-longings  of  the  dog,  and  the  picturesque  outlawry 
of  the  ground  hog, — and  get  a  hundred  readers  where 
Thoreau  got  one. 

This  is  the  same  indictment  as  that  so  often  brought 
against  the  stock  American  novel,  that  it  prefers  the 
gloss  of  easy  sentiment  to  the  rough,  true  fact,  that 
it  does  not  grapple  direct  with  things  as  they  are 
in  America,  but  looks  at  them  through  optimist's 
glasses  that  obscure  and  soften  the  scene.  Neverthe 
less,  I  very  much  prefer  the  sentimentalized  animal 
story  to  the  sentimentalized  man  story.  The  first,  as 
narrative,  may  be  romantic  bosh,  but  it  does  give  one 
a  loving,  faithful  study  of  background  that  is  worth 
the  price  that  it  costs  in  illusion.  It  reaches  my  emo- 


io8  On  the  American  Tradition 

tions  as  a  novelist  who  splashed  his  sentiment  with 
equal  profusion  never  could.  My  share  of  the  race 
mind  is  willing  even  to  be  tricked  into  sympathy  with 
its  environment.  I  would  rather  believe  that  the 
sparrow  on  my  telephone  wire  is  swearing  at  the  robin 
on  my  lawn  than  never  to  notice  either  of  them! 

How  curiously  complete  and  effective  is  the  service 
of  these  nature  books,  when  all  is  considered.  There 
is  no  better  instance,  I  imagine,  of  how  literature  and 
life  act  and  react  upon  one  another.  The  plain  Ameri 
can  takes  to  the  woods  because  he  wants  to,  he  does 
not  know  why.  The  writing  American  puts  the  woods 
into  his  books,  also  because  he  wants  to,  although  I 
suspect  that  sometimes  he  knows  very  well  why.  Nev 
ertheless,  the  same  general  tendency,  the  same  impulse, 
lie  behind  both.  But  reading  nature  books  makes  us 
crave  more  nature,  and  every  gratification  of  curiosity 
marks  itself  upon  the  sub-consciousness.  Thus  the 
clear,  vigorous  tradition  of  the  soil  passes  through  us 
to  our  books,  and  from  our  books  to  us.  It  is  the 
soundest,  the  sweetest,  if  not  the  greatest  and  deepest 
inspiration  of  American  literature.  In  the  confusion 
that  attends  the  meeting  here  of  all  the  races  it  is 
something  to  cling  to;  it  is  our  own. 


Thanks  to  the  Artists 

IT  would  be  a  wise  American  town  that  gave  up  pay 
ing  "boosters"  and  began  to  support  its  artists.  A 
country  is  just  so  much  country  until  it  has  been  talked 
about,  painted,  or  put  into  literature.  A  town  is  just 
so  many  brick  and  wood  squares,  inhabited  by  human 
animals,  until  some  one's  creative  and  interpretative 
mind  has  given  it  "atmosphere,"  by  which  we  mean 
significance. 

America  was  not  mere  wild  land  to  the  early  col 
onists:  it  was  a  country  that  had  already  been  seen 
through  the  eyes  of  enthusiastic  explorers  and  daring 
adventurers,  whose  airs  were  sweeter  than  Europe's, 
whose  fruits  were  richer,  where  forest  and  game,  and 
even  the  savage  inhabitant,  guaranteed  a  more  exciting 
life,  full  of  chance  for  the  future. 

New  England  was  not  just  so  much  stony  acre  and 
fishing  village  for  the  men  of  the  'twenties  and  'forties. 
It  was  a  land  haloed  by  the  hopes  and  sufferings  of 
forefathers,  where  every  town  had  its  record  of  struggle 
known  to  all  by  word  of  mouth  or  book. 

And  when  the  New  Englanders  pushed  westward,  it 
was  to  a  wilderness  which  already  had  its  literature, 
along  trails  of  which  they  had  read,  and  into  regions 
familiar  to  them  in  imagination. 

Say  what  you  please,  and  it  is  easy  to  say  too  much, 
of  the  imitativeness  of  American  literature  as  Irving, 

109 


no  On  the  American   Tradition 

Cooper,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Thoreau,  Twain,  and 
Howells  wrote  it,  nevertheless,  it  was  more  than  justi 
fied  by  the  human  significance  it  gave  to  mere  land 
in  America;  and  it  is  richer  and  more  valuable  than 
much  later  writing  just  because  of  this  attempt.  With 
out  Hawthorne  and  Thoreau,  New  England  would  have 
lost  its  past;  without  Cooper  and  Parkman  the  word 
"frontier"  would  mean  no  more  than  "boundary"  to 
most  of  us. 

It  is  foolish  to  lay  a  burden  on  art,  and  to  say,  for 
example,  that  American  novelists  must  accept  the  same 
obligation  to  cities  and  country  to-day.  But  we  may 
justly  praise  and  thank  them  when  they  do  enrich 
this  somewhat  monotonous  America  that  has  been 
planed  over  by  the  movies,  the  Saturday  Evening  Post, 
quick  transportation,  and  the  newspaper  with  its  syndi 
cated  features,  until  it  is  as  repetitive  as  a  tom-tom. 

After  the  Civil  War  every  one  began  to  move  in 
America,  and  the  immigrants,  moving  in,  moved  also, 
so  that  roots  were  pulled  up  everywhere  and  the  town 
one  lived  in  became  as  impersonal  as  a  hotel,  the  farm 
no  more  human  than  a  seed-bed.  Literature  of  the 
time  shows  this  in  two  ways:  the  rarity  of  books  that 
give  a  local  habitation  and  a  name  to  the  familiar, 
contemporary  scene;  and  a  romantic  interest,  as  of  the 
half-starved,  in  local  color  stories  of  remote  districts 
where  history  and  tradition  still  meant  something  in 
the  lives  of  the  inhabitants. 

It  is  encouraging  to  see  how  rapidly  all  this  is  chang 
ing.  In  poetry  the  Middle  West  and  New  England 


Thanks  to  the  Artists  ill 

have  been  made  again  to  figure  in  the  imagination. 
Rural  New  Hampshire  and  Illinois  are  alive  to-day 
for  those  who  have  read  Masters,  Lindsay,  and  Frost. 
In  prose  Chicago,  New  York,  New  Haven,  Richmond, 
Detroit,  San  Francisco,  and  the  ubiquitous  Main  Street 
of  a  hundred  Gopher  Prairies  have  become  wayfares 
for  the  memory  of  the  reader,  as  well  as  congeries  of 
amusement  and  trade.  In  particular  our  universities, 
which  in  the  'eighties  and  'nineties  were  darkly  lit  by 
a  few  flaring  torches  of  mawkish  romance,  have  been 
illumined  for  the  imagination  by  a  series  of  stories 
that  already  begin  to  make  the  undergraduate  compre 
hend  his  place  in  one  of  the  richest  streams  of  history, 
and  graduates  to  understand  their  youth.  Poole's 
"The  Harbor"  (which  served  both  college  and  city), 
Owen  Johnson's  "Stover  at  Yale,"  Norris's  "Salt,"  Fitz 
gerald's  "This  Side  of  Paradise,"  Stephen  Benet's  "The 
Beginning  of  Wisdom" — these  books  and  many  others 
have,  like  the  opening  chapters  of  Compton  Macken 
zie's  English  "Sinister  Street,"  given  depth,  color,  and 
significance  to  the  college,  which  may  not  increase  its 
immediate  and  measurable  efficiency  but  certainly 
strengthen  its  grip  upon  the  imagination,  and  there 
fore  upon  life. 

Planners,  builders,  laborers,  schemers,  executives 
make  a  city,  a  county,  a  university  habitable,  give 
them  their  bones  and  their  blood.  Poets  and  novelists 
make  us  appreciate  the  life  we  live  in  them,  give  them 
their  souls.  The  best  "boosters"  are  artists,  because 
their  boosting  lasts. 


To-day  in  American  Literature: 
Addressed  to  the  British* 

THE  analysis  of  conditions  and  tendencies  in  contempo 
rary  American  literature  which  I  wish  to  present  in 
this  lecture,  requires  historical  background,  detailed 
criticism,  and  a  study  of  development.  I  have  time 
for  reference  to  none  of  these,  and  can  only  summarize 
the  end  of  the  process.  If,  therefore,  I  seem  to  gen 
eralize  unduly,  I  hope  that  my  deficiencies  may  be 
charged  against  the  exigencies  of  the  occasion.  But 
I  generalize  the  more  boldly  because  I  am  speaking, 
after  all,  of  an  English  literature;  not  in  a  Roman- 
Greek  relationship  of  unnaturalized  borrowings  (for 
we  Americans  imitate  less  and  less),  but  English  by 
common  cultural  inheritance,  by  identical  language, 
and  by  deeply  resembling  character.  Nevertheless,  the 
more  American  literature  diverges  from  British  (and 
that  divergence  is  already  wide)  the  more  truly  Eng 
lish,  the  less  colonial  does  it  become.  A  Briton  should 
not  take  unkindly  assertions  of  independence,  even 
such  ruffled  independence  as  Lowell  expressed  in  "The 
Biglow  Papers": 

*This  lecture  was,  in  fact,  delivered  in  the  summer  of  1918 
at  Cambridge  University  as  part  of  a  summer  session  devoted 
to  the  United  States  of  America.  It  is  reprinted  in  lecture  form 
in  order  that  the  point  of  view  may  carry  its  own  explanation. 

112 


To-day  in  American  Literature        113 

I  guess  the  Lord  druv  down  Creation's  spiles 

'Thout  no  gret  helpin'  from  the  British  Isles, 

An'  could  contrive  to  keep  things  pooty  stiff 

Ef  they  withdrawed  from  business  in  a  miff; 

I  han't  no  patience  with  such  swelling  fellers  ez 

Think  God  can't  forge  'thout  them  to  blow  the  bellerses. 


I  desire  neither  to  apologize  for  American  literature, 
nor  to  boast  of  it.  No  apology  is  necessary  now,  what 
ever  Sydney  Smith  may  have  thought  in  earlier  days: 
and  it  is  decidedly  not  the  time  to  boast,  for  so  far 
literature  has  usually  been  a  by-product  in  the  develop 
ment  of  American  aptitudes.  But  it  may  be  useful  to 
state  broadly  at  the  beginning  some  of  the  difficulties 
and  the  closely  related  advantages  that  condition  the 
making  of  literature  in  the  United  States. 

The  critic  of  American  literature  usually  begins  in 
this  fashion :  America,  in  somewhat  over  a  century,  has 
built  up  a  political  and  social  organization  admittedly 
great.  She  has  not  produced,  however,  a  great  litera 
ture:  great  writers  she  has  produced,  but  not  a  great 
literature.  The  reason  is,  that  so  much  energy  has  been 
employed  in  developing  the  resources  of  a  great  coun 
try,  that  little  has  been  left  to  expend  in  creative  imagi 
nation.  The  currents  of  genius  have  flowed  toward 
trade,  agriculture,  and  manufacturing,  not  esthetics. 

This  explanation  is  easy  to  understand,  and  is  there 
fore  plausible,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  it  is  accurate. 
It  is  not  true  that  American  energy  has  been  absorbed 
by  business.  Politics,  and  politics  of  a  creative  char- 


114  On  *he  American   Tradition 

acter,  has  never  lacked  good  blood  in  the  United  States. 
Organization,  and  organization  of  a  kind  requiring  the 
creative  intellect,  has  drawn  enormously  upon  our  en 
ergies,  especially  since  the  Civil  War,  and  by  no  means 
all  of  it  has  been  business  organization.  Consider  our 
systems  of  education  and  philanthropy,  erected  for 
vast  needs.  And  I  venture  to  guess  that  more  varieties 
of  religious  experience  have  arisen  in  America  than 
elsewhere  in  the  same  period.  After  all,  why  expect  a 
century  and  a  half  of  semi-independent  intellectual  ex 
istence  to  result  in  a  great  national  literature?  Can 
other  countries,  other  times,  show  such  a  phenomenon? 

No,  if  we  have  been  slow  in  finding  ourselves 
in  literature,  in  creating  a  school  of  expression  like 
the  Elizabethan  or  the  Augustan,  the  difficulties  are 
to  be  sought  elsewhere  than  in  a  lack  of  energy. 

Seek  them  first  of  all  in  a  weakening  of  literary 
tradition.  The  sky  changes,  not  the  mind,  said  Horace, 
but  this  is  true  only  of  the  essentials  of  being.  The 
great  writers  of  our  common  English  tradition — 
Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  many  others — are 
as  good  for  us  as  they  are  good  for  you.  It  is  even 
whispered  that  our  language  is  more  faithful  to  their 
diction  than  is  yours.  But  the  conditions  of  life  in 
a  new  environment  bring  a  multitude  of  minor  changes 
with  them.  To  begin  with  little  things,  our  climate, 
our  birds,  our  trees,  our  daily  contact  with  nature,  are 
all  different.  Your  mellow  fluting  blackbird,  your 
wise  thrush  that  sings  each  song  twice  over,  your  high- 
fluttering  larks  we  do  not  know.  Our  blackbird  creaks 


To-day  in  American  Literature         115 

discordantly,  our  plaintive  lark  sings  from  the  meadow 
tussock,  our  thrush  chimes  his  heavenly  bell  from 
forest  dimness.  And  this  accounts,  may  I  suggest  in 
passing,  for  the  insistence  upon  nature  in  American 
writing,  from  Thoreau  down.  Our  social  and  economic 
experience  has  been  widely  different  also;  and  all  this, 
plus  the  results  of  a  break  in  space  and  time  with 
the  home  country  of  our  language,  weakened  that  tradi 
tional  influence  which  is  so  essential  for  the  production 
of  a  national  literature.  It  had  to  be;  good  will  come 
of  it;  but  for  a  time  we  vacillated,  and  we  still  vacillate, 
like  a  new  satellite  finding  its  course. 

Again,  the  constant  shift  of  location  within  America 
has  been  a  strong  delaying  factor.  Moving-day  has 
come  at  least  once  a  generation  for  most  American 
families  since  the  days  of  William  Penn  or  The  May 
flower.  The  president  of  a  Western  university,  who 
himself,  as  a  baby,  had  been  carried  across  the  Alle- 
ghenies  in  a  sling,  once  told  me  the  history  of  his 
family.  It  settled  in  Virginia  in  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury,  and  moved  westward  regularly  each  generation, 
until  his  father,  the  sixth  or  seventh  in  line,  had  reached 
California.  On  the  return  journey  he  had  got  as  far 
as  Illinois,  and  his  son  was  moving  to  New  York! 
The  disturbing  effect  upon  literature  of  this  constant 
change  of  soils  and  environment  is  best  proved  by 
negatives.  Wherever  there  has  been  a  settled  com 
munity  in  the  United  States — in  New  England  of  the 
'forties  and  again  in  the  'nineties,  in  the  Middle  West 
and  California  to-day — one  is  sure  to  find  a  literature 


n6  On  the  American  Tradition 

with  some  depth  and  solidity  to  it.  The  New  England 
civilization  of  the  early  nineteenth  century,  now  ma 
terially  altered,  was  a  definable  culture,  with  five  gen 
erations  behind  it,  and  strong  roots  in  the  old  world. 
From  it  came  the  most  mature  school  of  American 
literature  that  so  far  we  have  possessed. 

Still  another  difficulty  must  be  added.  The  social. 
Pessimists,  who  see  in  our  Eastern  states  a  mere  con 
geries  of  all  the  white  races,  and  some  not  white,  bewail 
the  impossibility  of  a  real  nation  in  America.  But 
the  racial  problem  has  always  been  with  us,  nor  has 
it  by  any  means  always  been  unsolved.  Before  the 
Revolution,  we  were  English,  Scottish,  Welsh,  Low 
German,  Huguenot,  Dutch,  and  Swedish.  Before  the 
Civil  War,  we  were  the  same  plus  the  Irish  and  the 
Germans  of  '48.  And  now  we  add  Slavs,  Jews,  Greeks, 
and  Italians.  I  do  not  minimize  the  danger.  But  let 
it  be  understood  that  while  our  civilization  has  always 
been  British  (if  that  term  is  used  in  its  broadest  sense) 
our  blood  has  always  been  mixed,  even  in  Virginia  and 
New  England.  This  has  mao)e  it  hard  for  us  to  feel 
entirely  at  home  in  the  only  literary  tradition  we  pos 
sessed  and  cared  to  possess.  We  have  been  like  the 
man  with  a  ready-made  suit.  The  cloth  is  right,  but 
the  cut  must  be  altered  before  the  clothes  will  fit  him. 

And  finally,  America  has  always  been  decentralized 
intellectually.  It  is  true  that  most  of  the  books  and 
magazines  are  published  in  New  York,  and  have  always 
been  published  there,  or  in  Boston  or  Philadelphia. 
But  they  have  been  written  all  over  a  vast  country  by 


To-day  In  American  Literature        117 

men  and  women  who  frequently  never  see  each  other 
in  the  flesh.  There  has  been  no  center  like  London, 
where  writers  can  rub  elbows  half-a-dozen  times  a  year. 
Boston  was  such  a  capital  once;  only,  however,  for 
New  England.  New  York  is  a  clearing-house  of  litera 
ture  now;  but  the  writing  is,  most  of  it,  done  elsewhere. 
It  is  curious  to  speculate  what  might  have  happened  if 
the  capital  of  the  United  States  had  been  fixed  at  New 
York  instead  of  Washington! 

From  this  decentralization  there  results  a  lack  of 
literary  self-confidence  that  is  one  of  the  most  impor 
tant  factors  in  the  intellectual  life  of  America.  The 
writer  in  Tucson  or  Minneapolis  or  Bangor  is  de 
pendent  upon  his  neighbors  to  a  degree  impossible  in 
Manchester  or  Glasgow  or  York.  He  is  marooned 
there,  separated  in  space  and  time,  if  not  in  mind, 
from  men  and  women  who  believe,  as  he  may  believe, 
in  the  worth  of  literary  standards,  in  the  necessity  of 
making  not  the  most  easily  readable  book,  but  the  best. 
Here  is  one  cause  of  the  feebleness  of  many  American 
"literary"  books. 

Nevertheless,  this  very  decentralization  may  have, 
when  we  reach  literary  maturity,  its  great  advantages. 
It  is  difficult  to  over-estimate  the  color,  the  variety, 
the  verve  of  American  life.  And  much  of  this  comes 
not  from  the  push  and  "hustle"  and  energy  of  America 
— for  energy  is  just  energy  all  the  world  over — but 
is  rather  to  be  found  in  the  new  adjustments  of  race 
and  environment  which  are  multiplying  infinitely  all 
over  the  United  States.  It  is  true  that  American  civili- 


Ii8  On  the  American  Tradition 

zation  seems  to  be  monotonous — that  one  sees  the  same 
magazines  and  books,  the  same  moving-picture  shows, 
the  same  drug-stores,  trolley  cars,  and  hotels  on  a 
New  York  model,  hears  the  same  slang  and  much  the 
same  general  conversation  from  New  Haven  to  Los 
Angeles.  But  this  monotony  is  superficial.  Beneath 
the  surface  there  are  infinite  strainings  and  divergences 
— the  peasant  immigrant  working  toward,  the  well- 
established  provincial  holding  to,  the  wide-ranging  mind 
of  the  intellectual  working  away  from,  this  dead  level 
of  conventional  standards.  Where  we  are  going,  it 
is  not  yet  possible  to  say.  Quite  certainly  not  toward 
an  un-British  culture.  Most  certainly  not  toward  a 
culture  merely  neo-English.  But  in  any  case,  it  is 
because  San  Francisco  and  Indianapolis  and  Chicago 
and  Philadelphia  have  literary  republics  of  their  own, 
sovereign  like  our  states,  yet  highly  federalized  also 
in  a  common  bond  of  American  taste  and  ideals  which 
the  war  made  stronger — it  is  this  fact  that  makes  it 
possible  to  record,  as  American  writers  are  already 
recording,  the  multifarious,  confused  development  of 
racial  instincts  working  into  a  national  consciousness. 
Localization  is  our  difficulty;  it  is  also  the  only  means 
by  which  literature  can  keep  touch  with  life  in  so 
huge  a  congeries  as  America.  If  we  can  escape  pro 
vincialism  and  yet  remain  local,  all  will  be  well. 

So  far  I  have  been  merely  defining  the  terms  upon 
which  literature  has  been  written  in  America.  Let  me 
add  to  these  terms  a  classification.  If  one  stretches 
the  meaning  of  literature  to  cover  all  writing  in  prose 


To-day  in  American  Literature         119 

or  verse  that  is  not  simply  informative,  then  four 
categories  will  include  all  literary  writing  in  America 
that  is  in  any  way  significant.  We  have  an  artistocratic 
and  a  democratic  literature;  we  have  a  dilettante  and  a 
vast  bourgeois  literature. 

In  using  the  term  aristocratic  literature  I  have  in 
mind  an  intellectual  rather  than  a  social  category.  I 
mean  all  writing  addressed  to  specially  trained  intelli 
gence,  essays  that  imply  a  rich  background  of  knowl 
edge  and  taste,  stories  dependent  upon  psychological 
analysis,  poetry  which  is  austere  in  content  or  com 
plex  in  form.  I  mean  Henry  James  and  Sherwood  An 
derson,  Mr.  Cabell,  Mr.  Hergesheimer,  and  Mrs.  Whar- 
ton,  Agnes  Repplier,  Mr.  Crothers,  Mr.  Sherman,  and 
Mr.  Colby. 

By  democratic  literature  I  mean  all  honest  writing, 
whether  crude  or  carefully  wrought,  that  endeavors 
to  interpret  the  American  scene  in  typical  aspects  for 
all  who  care  to  read.  I  mean  Walt  Whitman  and 
Edgar  Lee  Masters;  I  mean  a  hundred  writers  of  short 
stories  who,  lacking  perhaps  the  final  touch  of  art, 
have  nevertheless  put  a  new  world  and  a  new  people 
momentarily  upon  the  stage.  I  mean  the  addresses  of 
Lincoln  and  of  President  Wilson. 

With  dilettante  literature  I  come  to  a  very  different 
and  less  important  classification:  the  vast  company — 
how  vast  few  even  among  natives  suspect — of  would-be 
writers,  who  in  every  town  and  county  of  the  United 
States  are  writing,  writing,  writing  what  they  hope  to 
be  literature,  what  is  usually  but  a  pallid  imitation  of 


I2O  On  the  American  Tradition 

worn-out  literary  forms.  More  people  seem  to  be  en 
gaged  in  occasional  production  of  poetry  and  fiction— 
and  especially  of  poetry — in  America,  than  in  any  single 
money-making  enterprise  characteristic  of  a  great  in 
dustrial  nation.  The  flood  pours  through  every  edi 
torial  office  in  the  land,  trickles  into  the  corners  of 
country  newspapers,  makes  short-lived  dilettante  maga 
zines,  and  runs  back,  most  of  it,  to  its  makers.  It  is 
not  literature,  for  the  bulk  is  bloodless,  sentimental, 
or  cheap,  but  it  is  significant  of  the  now  passionate 
American  desire  to  express  our  nascent  soul. 

My  chief  difficulty  is  to  explain  what  I  mean  by 
bourgeois  literature.  The  flood  of  dilettante  writing 
is  subterranean;  it  is  bourgeois  literature  that  makes 
the  visible  rivers  and  oceans  of  American  writing.  And 
these  fluid  areas  are  like  the  lakes  on  maps  of  Central 
Asia — bounds  cannot  be  set  to  them.  One  finds  maga 
zines  (and  pray  remember  that  the  magazine  is  as  great 
a  literary  force  as  the  book  in  America),  one  finds 
magazines  whose  entire  function  is  to  be  admirably 
bourgeois  for  their  two  million  odd  of  readers.  And 
in  the  more  truly  literary  and  "aristocratic"  periodicals, 
in  the  books  published  for  the  discriminating,  the 
bourgeois  creeps  in  and  often  is  dominant.  The  bour 
geois  in  American  literature  is  a  special  variety  that 
must  not  be  too  quickly  identified  with  the  literary 
product  that  bears  the  same  name  in  more  static  civili 
zations.  It  is  nearly  always  clever.  Witness  our  short 
stories,  which  even  when  calculated  not  to  puzzle  the 
least  intelligence  nor  to  transcend  the  most  modest 


To-day  in  American  Literature         121 

limitations  of  taste,  must  be  carefully  constructed  and 
told  with  facility  or  they  will  never  see  the  light.  And 
this  literature  is  nearly  always  true  to  the  superficies 
of  life,  to  which,  indeed,  it  confines  itself.  Wild  melo 
drama  is  more  and  more  being  relegated  to  the 
"movies,"  soft  sentimentality  still  has  its  place  in  the 
novel,  but  is  losing  ground  in  the  people's  library,  the 
magazines.  Life  as  the  American  believes  he  is  living 
it,  is  the  subject  of  bourgeois  literature.  But  the  sad 
limitation  upon  this  vast  output  is  that,  whether  poetry, 
criticism,  or  fiction,  it  does  not  interpret,  it  merely 
pictures;  and  this  is  the  inevitable  failure  of  pages 
that  must  be  written  always  for  a  million  or  more  of 
readers.  It  is  standardized  literature;  and  good  litera 
ture,  like  the  best  airplanes,  cannot  be  standardized. 

Now  the  error  made  by  most  English  critics  in  en 
deavoring  to  estimate  the  potentialities  or  the  actuali 
ties  of  American  literature,  is  to  judge  under  the  influ 
ence  of  this  crushing  weight  of  clever,  mediocre  writ 
ing.  They  feel,  quite  justly,  its  enormous  energy  and 
its  terrible  cramping  power.  They  see  that  the  best  of 
our  democratic  writers  belong  on  its  fringe;  see  also 
that  our  makers  of  aristocratic  literature  and  our  dilet 
tante  escape  its  weight  only  when  they  cut  themselves 
off  from  the  life  beat  of  the  nation.  And  therefore, 
as  a  distinguished  English  poet  recently  said,  America 
is  doomed  to  a  hopeless  and  ever-spreading  mediocrity. 

With  this  view  I  wish  to  take  immediate  issue  upon 
grounds  that  are  both  actual  and  theoretical.  There  is 
a  fallacy  here  to  begin  with,  a  fallacious  analogy.  It 


122  On  the  American  Tradition 

is  true,  I  believe,  in  Great  Britain,  and  also  in  France, 
that  there  are  two  separate  publics;  that  the  readers 
who  purchase  from  the  news  stands  are  often  as  com 
pletely  unaware  of  literary  books  for  literary  people 
as  if  these  bore  the  imprint  of  the  moon.  But  even 
in  England  the  distinction  is  by  no  means  sharp;  and 
in  America  it  is  not  a  question  of  distinctions  at  all, 
but  of  gradations.  In  our  better  magazines  are  to  be 
found  all  the  categories  of  which  I  have  written — even 
the  dilettante;  and  it  is  a  bold  critic  who  will  assert 
that  pages  one  to  twenty  are  read  only  by  one  group, 
and  pages  twenty  to  forty  only  by  another.  We  are 
the  most  careless  readers  in  the  world;  but  also  the 
most  voracious  and  the  most  catholic. 

And  next,  let  us  make  up  our  minds  once  for  all 
that  a  bourgeois  literature — by  which,  let  me  repeat, 
I  mean  a  literature  that  is  good  without  being  very 
good,  true  without  being  utterly  true,  clever  without 
being  fine — is  a  necessity  for  a  vast  population  moving 
upward  from  generation  to  generation  in  the  intellectual 
scale,  toward  a  level  that  must  be  relatively  low  in 
order  to  be  attainable.  Let  us  say  that  such  a  litera 
ture  cannot  be  real  literature.  I  am  content  with  that 
statement.  But  it  must  exist,  and  good  may  come  of 
it. 

This  is  the  critical  point  toward  which  I  have  been 
moving  in  this  lecture,  and  it  is  here  that  the  hopeful 
influence  of  the  American  spirit,  as  I  interpret  it  to 
day,  assumes  its  importance.  That  spirit  is  both  ideal 
istic  and  democratic.  Idealistic  in  the  sense  that  there 


To-day  in  American  Literature        123 

is  a  profound  and  often  foolishly  optimistic  belief  in 
America  that  every  son  can  be  better  than  his  father, 
better  in  education,  better  in  taste,  better  in  the  power 
to  accomplish  and  understand.  Democratic  in  this 
sense,  that  with  less  political  democracy  than  one  finds 
in  Great  Britain,  there  is  again  a  fundamental  belief 
that  every  tendency,  every  taste,  every  capacity,  like 
every  man,  should  have  its  chance  somehow,  some 
where,  to  get  a  hearing,  to  secure  its  deservings,  to 
make,  to  have,  to  learn  what  seems  the  best. 

A  vague  desire,  you  say,  resulting  in  confusion  and 
mediocrity.  This  is  true  and  will  be  true  for  some 
time  longer;  but  instead  of  arguing  in  generalities  let 
me  illustrate  these  results  by  the  literature  I  have  been 
discussing. 

When  brought  to  bear  upon  the  category  of  the 
dilettante,  it  is  precisely  this  desire  for  "general  im 
provement''  that  has  encouraged  such  a  curious  out 
pouring  from  mediocre  though  sensitive  hearts.  The 
absence  of  strong  literary  tradition,  the  lack  of  deep 
literary  soil,  has  been  responsible  for  the  insipidity  of 
the  product.  The  habit  of  reference  to  the  taste  of 
the  majority  has  prevented  us  from  taking  this  product 
too  seriously.  Without  that  instinctive  distrust  of 
the  merely  literary  common  to  all  bourgeois  com 
munities,  we  might  well  be  presenting  to  you  as  typical 
American  literature  a  gentle  weakling  whose  manners, 
when  he  has  them,  have  been  formed  abroad. 

Aristocratic  literature  has  suffered  in  one  respect 
from  the  restraints  of  democracy  and  the  compulsions 


124  ®n  the  American  Tradition 

of  democratic  idealism.  It  has  lacked  the  self-confi 
dence  and  therefore  the  vigor  of  its  parallels  in  the 
old  world.  Emerson  and  Thoreau  rose  above  these 
restrictions,  and  so  did  Hawthorne  and  Poe.  But  in 
later  generations  especially,  our  intellectual  poetry  and 
intellectual  prose  is  too  frequently  though  by  no  means 
always  less  excellent  than  yours.  Nevertheless,  thanks 
to  the  influence  of  this  bourgeois  spirit  upon  the  intel 
lects  that  in  American  towns  must  live  with,  if  not 
share  it;  thanks,  also,  to  the  magazines  through  which 
our  finer  minds  must  appeal  to  the  public  rather  than 
to  a  circle  or  a  clique,  the  nerves  of  transfer  between 
the  community  at  large  and  the  intellectuals  are  active, 
the  tendons  that  unite  them  strong.  I  argue  much  from 
this. 

Now  theoretically,  where  you  find  an  instinctive  and 
therefore  an  honest  passion  for  the  ideals  of  democ 
racy,  you  should  find  a  great  literature  expressing  and 
interpreting  the  democracy.  I  have  given  already 
some  reasons  why  in  practice  this  has  not  yet  become 
an  actuality  in  America.  Let  me  add,  in  discussing  the 
bearing  of  this  argument  upon  the  third  category  of 
American  literature,  the  democratic,  one  more. 

I  doubt  whether  we  yet  know  precisely  what  is  meant 
by  a  great  democratic  literature.  Democracy  has  been 
in  transition  at  least  since  the  French  Revolution;  it 
is  in  rapid  transition  now.  The  works  which  we  call 
democratic  are  many  of  them  expressive  of  phases 
merely  of  the  popular  life,  just  as  so  much  American  lit 
erature  is  expressive  of  localities  and  groups  in  America. 


To-day  in  American  Literature        125 

And  usually  the  works  of  genius  that  we  do  possess 
have  been  written  by  converted  aristocrats,  like  Tol 
stoy,  and  have  a  little  of  the  fanaticism  and  over-em 
phasis  of  the  convert.  Or  they  represent  and  share  the 
turgidity  of  the  minds  they  interpret,  like  some  of  the 
work  of  Walt  Whitman.  All  this  is  true,  and  yet  a 
careful  reader  of  American  literature  must  be  more  im 
pressed  by  such  prose  as  Lincoln's,  by  such  poems  as 
Whitman's,  such  fiction  as  Mark  Twain's  at  his  best, 
than  by  many  more  elegant  works  of  polite  literature. 
For  these — and  I  could  add  to  them  dozens  of  later 
stories  and  poems,  ephemeral  perhaps  but  showing 
what  may  be  done  when  we  burst  the  bourgeois  chain 
— for  these  are  discoveries  in  the  vigor,  the  poignancy, 
the  color  of  our  democratic  national  life. 

I  have  already  hinted  at  what  seems  to  me  the  way 
out  and  up  for  American  literature.  It  will  not  be  by 
fine  writing  that  borrows  or  adapts  foreign  models, 
even  English  models  which  are  not  foreign  to  us.  It 
will  not  come  through  geniuses  of  the  backwoods, 
adopted  by  some  coterie,  and  succeeding,  when  they  do 
succeed,  by  their  strangeness  rather  than  the  value  of 
the  life  they  depict.  That  might  have  happened  in  the 
romantic  decades  of  the  early  nineteenth  century;  but 
our  English  literary  tradition  was  a  saving  influence 
which  kept  us  from  gaucherie,  even  if  it  set  limits  upon 
our  strength.  Our  expectation,  so  I  think,  is  in  the 
slowly  mounting  level  of  the  vast  bourgeois  literature 
that  fills  not  excellently,  but  certainly  not  discreditably, 
our  books  and  magazines.  There,  and  not  in  coteries, 


126  On  the  American  Tradition 

is  our  school  of  writing.  When  originality  wearies  of 
stereotypes  and  conventions,  when  energy  and  ability 
force  the  editorial  hand,  and  appeal  to  the  desire  of 
Americans  to  know  themselves,  we  shall  begin  a  new 
era  in  American  literature.  Our  problem  is  not  chiefly 
to  expose  and  attack  and  discredit  the  flat  conven 
tionality  of  popular  writing.  It  is  rather  to  crack  the 
smooth  and  monotonous  surface  and  stir  the  fire  be 
neath  it,  until  the  lava  of  new  and  true  imaginings  can 
pour  through.  And  this  is,  historically,  the  probable 
course  of  evolution.  It  was  the  Elizabethan  fashion. 
The  popular  forms  took  life  and  fire  then.  The  advice 
of  the  classicists,  who  wished  to  ignore  the  crude  drama 
beloved  of  the  public,  was  not  heeded;  it  will  not  be 
heeded  now.  Our  task  is  to  make  a  bourgeois  democ 
racy  fruitful.  We  must  work  with  what  we  have. 

Much  has  been  said  of  the  advantage  for  us,  and  per 
haps  for  the  world,  which  has  come  from  the  separa 
tion  of  the  American  colonies  from  Great  Britain.  Two 
systems  of  closely  related  political  thinking,  two  na 
tional  characters,  have  developed  and  been  successful 
instead  of  one.  Your  ancestors  opened  the  door  of  de 
parture  for  mine,  somewhat  brusquely  it  is  true,  but 
with  the  same  result,  if  not  the  same  reason,  as  with 
the  boys  they  sent  away  to  school — they  made  men 
of  us. 

So  it  is  with  literature.  American  literature  will 
never,  as  some  critics  would  persuade  us,  be  a  child 
without  a  parent.  In  its  fundamental  character  it  is, 
and  will  remain,  British,  because  at  bottom  the  Ameri- 


To-day  in  American  Literature        127 

can  character,  whatever  its  blood  mixture,  is  formed 
upon  customs  and  ideals  that  have  the  same  origin 
and  a  parallel  development  with  yours.  But  this  litera 
ture,  like  our  political  institutions,  will  not  duplicate; 
like  the  seedling,  it  will  make  another  tree  and  not  an 
other  branch.  In  literature  we  are  still  pioneers.  I 
think  that  it  may  be  reserved  for  us  to  discover  a  litera 
ture  for  the  new  democracy  of  English-speaking  peoples 
that  is  coming — a  literature  for  the  common  people  who 
do  not  wish  to  stay  common.  Like  Lincoln's,  it  will  not 
be  vulgar;  like  Whitman's,  never  tawdry;  like  Mark 
Twain's,  not  empty  of  penetrating  thought;  like 
Shakespeare's  it  will  be  popular.  If  this  should  hap 
pen,  as  I  believe  it  may,  it  would  be  a  just  return  upon 
our  share  of  a  great  inheritance. 


Time's  Mirror 

WHAT  is  the  use  of  criticizing  modern  literature  unless 
you  are  willing  to  criticize  modern  life?  And  how  many 
Americans  are  willing  to  criticize  it  with  eyes  wide 
open? 

The  outstanding  fact  in  mass  civilization  as  it  exists 
in  America  and  Western  Europe  to-day  is  that  it  moves 
with  confidence  in  only  one  direction.  The  workers, 
after  their  escape  from  the  industrial  slavery  of  the 
last  century,  have  only  one  plan  for  the  future  upon 
which  they  can  unite,  a  greater  share  in  material  bene 
fits.  The  possessors  of  capital  have  only  one  program 
upon  which  they  agree,  a  further  exploitation  of  ma 
terial  resources,  for  the  greater  comfort  of  the  com 
munity  and  themselves.  The  professional  classes  have 
only  one  professional  instinct  in  common,  to  discover 
new  methods  by  which  man's  comfort  may  be  made 
secure. 

In  this  way  of  life,  as  the  Buddhist  might  have  called 
it,  all  our  really  effective  energy  discharges  itself.  Even 
the  church  is  most  active  in  social  service,  and  philoso 
phy  is  accounted  most  original  when  it  accounts  for  be 
havior.  Theology  has  become  a  stagnant  science,  and, 
to  prove  the  rule  by  contraries,  the  main  problem  of 
man's  spiritual  relation  to  the  universe,  his  end  in  liv- 

128 


Time's  Mirror  129 

ing,  and  the  secret  of  real  happiness  is  left  to  a  senti 
mental  idealism  in  which  reason,  as  the  Greeks  knew 
it,  has  less  and  less  place,  and  primitive  instinct,  as  the 
anthropologists  define  it,  and  the  Freudian  psycholo 
gists  explain  it,  is  given  more  and  more  control. 

The  flat  truth  is  that,  as  a  civilization,  we  are  less 
sure  of  where  we  are  going,  where  we  want  to  go,  how 
and  for  what  we  wish  to  live,  than  at  any  intelligent 
period  of  which  we  have  full  record.  This  is  not  pessi 
mism.  It  is  merely  a  fact,  which  is  dependent  upon 
our  failure  to  digest  the  problems  that  democracy,  ma 
chinery,  feminism,  and  the  destruction  of  our  working 
dogmas  by  scientific  discovery,  have  presented  to  us. 
All  these  things  are  more  likely  to  be  good  than  bad, 
all  bear  promise  for  the  future,  but  all  tend  to  confuse 
contemporary  men.  New  power  over  nature  has  been 
given  them  and  they  are  engaged  in  seizing  it.  New 
means  of  testing  preconceived  opinion  are  theirs,  and 
they  are  using  them.  The  numbers  which  can  be  called 
intelligent  are  tremendously  augmented  and  the  race  to 
secure  material  comforts  has  become  a  mass  move 
ment  which  will  not  cease  until  the  objective  is  won. 

In  the  meantime,  there  is  only  one  road  which  is 
clear — the  road  of  material  progress,  and  whether  its 
end  lies  in  the  new  barbarism  of  a  mechanistic  state 
where  the  mental  and  physical  faculties  will  decline  in 
proportion  to  the  means  discovered  for  healing  their 
ills,  or  whether  it  is  merely  a  path  where  the  privileged 
leaders  must  mark  step  for  a  while  until  the  unpriv 
ileged  masses  catch  up  with  them  in  material  welfare, 


130  On  the  American   Tradition 

no  one  knows  and  few  that  are  really  competent  care 
to  inquire. 

Now  this  obsession  with  material  welfare  is  the  un 
derlying  premise  with  which  all  discussion  of  con 
temporary  literature,  and  particularly  American  litera 
ture,  must  begin.  Ours  is  a  literature  of  an  age  without 
dogma,  which  is  to  say  without  a  theory  of  living;  the 
literature  of  an  inductive,  an  experimental  period, 
where  the  really  vital  attempt  is  to  subdue  physical  en 
vironment  (for  the  first  time  in  history)  to  the  needs 
of  the  common  man.  It  is  an  age,  therefore,  interested 
and  legitimately  interested  in  behavior  rather  than 
character,  in  matter  and  its  laws  rather  than  in  the  con 
trol  of  matter  for  the  purposes  of  fine  living. 

Therefore,  our  vital  literature  is  behavioristic,  nat 
uralistic,  experimental — rightly  so  I  think — and  must 
be  so  until  we^seek  another  way.  That  search  cannot 
be  long  deferred.  One  expects  its  beginning  at  any 
moment,  precisely  as  one  expects,  and  with  reason,  a 
reaction  against  the  lawless  thinking  and  unrestrained 
impulses  which  have  followed  the  war.  One  hopes  that 
it  will  not  be  to  Puritanism,  unless  it  be  that  stoic  state 
of  mind  which  lay  behind  Puritanism,  for  no  old  solu 
tion  will  serve.  The  neo-Puritans  to-day  abuse  the 
rebels,  young  and  old,  because  they  have  thrown  over 
dogma  and  discipline.  The  rebels  accuse  Puritanism 
for  preserving  the  dogma  that  cramps  instead  of  frees. 
It  is  neither  return  to  the  old  nor  the  destruction  thereof 
that  we  must  seek,  but  a  new  religion,  a  new  discipline, 
a  new  hope,  and  a  new  end  which  can  give  more  signifi- 


Time's  Mirror  131 

cance  to  living  than  dwellers  in  our  industrial  civiliza 
tion  are  now  finding. 

In  the  meantime,  those  who  seek  literary  consola 
tion  are  by  no  means  to  be  urged  away  from  their  own 
literature,  which  contains  a  perfect  picture  of  our 
feverish  times,  and  has  implicit  within  it  the  medicine 
for  our  ills,  if  they  are  curable.  But  they  may  be  ad 
vised  to  go  again  and  more  often  than  is  now  the 
fashion  to  the  writings  of  those  men  who  found  for 
their  own  time,  a  real  significance,  who  could  formu 
late  a  saving  doctrine,  and  who  could  give  to  literature 
what  it  chiefly  lacks  to-day,  a  core  of  ethical  convic 
tion  and  a  view  of  man  in  his  world  sub  specie  ceterni- 
tatis.  It  is  the  appointed  time  in  which  to  read  Dante 
and  Milton,  Shakespeare,  and  Goethe,  above  all  Plato 
and  the  great  tragedies  of  Greece.  Our  laughter  would 
be  sweeter  if  there  were  more  depth  of  thought  and 
emotion  to  our  serious  moods. 


The  Family  Magazine 

READERS  who  like  magazines  will  be  pleased,  those  who 
do  not  like  them  perhaps  distressed,  to  learn,  if  they 
are  not  already  aware  of  it,  that  the  magazine  as 
we  know  it  to-day  is  distinctly  an  American  creation. 
They  may  stir,  or  soothe,  their  aroused  emotions  by 
considering  that  the  magazine  which  began  in  Eng 
land  literally  as  a  storehouse  of  miscellanies  attained 
in  mid-nineteenth  century  United  States  a  dignity,  a 
harmony,  and  a  format  which  gave  it  preeminence 
among  periodicals.  Harper's  and  The  Century  in 
particular  shared  with  Mark  Twain  and  the  sewing 
machine  the  honor  of  making  America  familiarly  known 
abroad. 

I  do  not  wish  to  overburden  this  essay  with  history, 
but  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  appearance  of  such  a 
dominating  medium  in  a  comparatively  unliterary  coun 
try  is  relevant  to  the  discussion  to  follow.  The  maga 
zine  of  those  days  was  vigorous.  It  was  vigorous  be 
cause,  unlike  other  American  publications,  it  was  not 
oppressed  by  competition.  Until  the  laws  of  interna 
tional  copyright  were  completed,  the  latest  novels  of 
the  Victorians,  then  at  their  prime,  could  be  rushed 
from  a  steamer,  and  distributed  in  editions  which  were 
cheap  because  no  royalties  had  to  be  paid.  Thackeray 
and  Dickens  could  be  sold  at  a  discount,  where  Ameri- 

132 


The  Family  Magazine  133 

can  authors  of  less  reputation  had  to  meet  full  charges. 
And  the  like  was  true  of  poetry.  But  the  magazine,  like 
the  newspaper,  was  not  international;  it  was  national 
at  least  in  its  entirety,  and  for  it  British  periodicals 
could  not  be  substituted.  Furthermore,  it  could,  and 
did,  especially  in  its  earlier  years,  steal  unmercifully 
from  England,  so  that  a  subscriber  got  both  homebrew 
and  imported  for  a  single  payment.  Thus  the  maga 
zine  flourished  in  the  mid-century  while  the  American 
novel  declined. 

A  notable  instance  of  this  vigor  was  the  effect  of  the 
growing  magazine  upon  the  infant  short  story.  Our 
American  magazine  made  the  development  of  the 
American  short  story  possible  by  creating  a  need  for 
good  short  fiction.  The  rise  of  our  short  story,  after 
a  transitional  period  when  the  earliest  periodicals  and 
the  illustrated  Annuals  sought  good  short  stories  and 
could  not  get  them,  coincides  with  the  rise  of  the  family 
magazine.  It  was  such  a  demand  that  called  forth  the 
powers  in  prose  of  the  poet,  Poe.  And  as  our  maga 
zine  has  become  the  best  of  its  kind,  so  in  the  short 
story,  and  in  the  short  story  alone,  does  American 
literature  rival  the  more  fecund  literatures  of  England 
and  Europe. 

That  a  strong  and  native  tendency  made  the  Ameri 
can  magazine  is  indicated  by  the  effect  of  our  atmo 
sphere  upon  the  periodical  which  the  English  have 
always  called  a  review.  Import  that  form,  as  was  done 
for  The  North  American,  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  The 
Forum,  or  The  Yale  Review,  and  immediately  the  new 


134  ®n  the  American   Tradition 

American  periodical  begins  to  be  a  little  more  of  a 
magazine,  a  little  more  miscellaneous  in  its  content,  a 
little  less  of  a  critical  survey.  Critical  articles  give 
place  to  memoirs  and  sketches,  fiction  or  near  fiction 
creeps  in.  There  is  always  a  tendency  to  lose  type  and 
be  absorbed  into  the  form  that  the  mid-century  had 
made  so  successful:  a  periodical,  handsomely  illus 
trated,  with  much  fiction,  some  description,  a  little  seri 
ous  comment  on  affairs  written  for  the  general  reader, 
occasional  poetry,  and  enough  humor  to  guarantee  di 
version.  This  is  our  national  medium  for  literary  ex 
pression — an  admirable  medium  for  a  nation  of  long 
distance  commuters.  And  it  is  this  "family  magazine" 
I  wish  to  discuss  in  its  literary  aspects. 

The  dominance  of  the  family  magazine  as  a  purveyor 
of  general  literature  in  America  has  continued,  but  in 
our  own  time  the  species  (like  other  strong  organisms) 
has  divided  into  two  genres,  which  are  more  different 
than,  on  the  surface,  they  appear.  The  illustrated 
literary  magazine  (the  family  magazine  par  excellence} 
must  now  be  differentiated  from  the  illustrated  journal 
istic  magazine,  but  both  are  as  American  in  origin  as 
the  review  and  the  critical  weekly  are  English. 

It  was  the  native  vigor  of  the  family  magazine  that 
led  to  the  Great  Divergence  of  the  'nineties,  which 
older  readers  will  remember  well.  The  literary  his 
torian  of  that  period  usually  gives  a  different  explana 
tion.  He  is  accustomed  to  say  that  the  old-time 
"quality"  magazines,  Harper's,  Scribner's,  and  the  rest, 
were  growing  moribund  when,  by  an  effort  of  editorial 


The  Family  Magazine  135 

genius,  Mr.  McClure  created  a  new  and  rebellious  type 
of  magazine,  which  was  rapidly  imitated.  We  called  it, 
as  I  remember,  for  want  of  a  better  title,  the  fifteen- 
cent  magazine.  In  the  wake  of  McClure's,  came  Col 
lier's,  The  Saturday  Evening  Post,  The  Ladies  Home 
Journal,  and  all  the  long  and  profitable  train  which 
adapted  the  McClurean  discovery  to  special  needs  and 
circumstances. 

I  do  not  believe  that  this  is  a  true  statement  of  what 
happened  in  the  fruitful  'nineties.  McClure's  was  not, 
speaking  biologically,  a  new  species  at  all;  it  was  only 
a  mutation  in  which  the  recessive  traits  of  the  old 
magazine  became  dominant  while  the  invaluable  type 
was  preserved.  To  speak  more  plainly,  the  literary 
magazine,  as  America  knew  it,  had  always  printed 
news,  matured  news,  often  stale  news,  but  still  journal 
ism.  Read  any  number  of  Harper's  in  the  'seventies 
for  proof.  And,  part  passu,  American  journalism  was 
eagerly  trying  to  discover  some  outlet  for  its  finer  prod 
ucts,  a  medium  where  good  pictures,  sober  after 
thoughts,  and  the  finish  that  comes  from  careful  writ 
ing  were  possible.  Harper's  Weekly  in  Civil  War  days, 
and  later,  was  its  creation. 

And  now  it  was  happily  discovered  that  the  family 
magazine  had  a  potential  popularity  far  greater  than 
its  limited  circulation.  With  its  month-long  period  of 
incubation,  its  elastic  form,  in  which  story,  special  arti 
cle,  poetry,  picture,  humor,  could  all  be  harmoniously 
combined,  only  a  redistribution  of  emphasis  was  neces 
sary  in  order  to  make  broader  its  appeal.  Mr.  McClure 


136  On  the  American  Tradition 

journalized  the  family  magazine.  He  introduced  finan 
cial  and  economic  news  in  the  form  of  sensational  in 
vestigations,  he  bid  for  stories  more  lively,  more  im 
mediate  in  their  interest,  more  journalistic  than  we 
were  accustomed  to  read  (Kipling's  journalistic  stories 
for  example,  were  first  published  in  America  in  Me- 
Clure's).  He  accepted  pictures  in  which  certainty  of 
hitting  the  public  eye  was  substituted  for  a  guarantee 
of  art.  And  yet,  with  a  month  to  prepare  his  number, 
and  only  twelve  issues  a  year,  he  could  pay  for  excel 
lence,  and  insure  it,  as  no  newspaper  had  ever  been 
able  to  do.  And  he  was  freed  from  the  incubus  of 
"local  news"  and  day-by-day  reports.  In  brief,  under 
his  midwifery,  the  literary  magazine  gave  birth  to  a 
super-newspaper. 

Needless  to  say,  the  great  increase  in  the  number  of 
American  readers  and  the  corresponding  decline  in  the 
average  intelligence  and  discrimination  of  the  reading 
public  had  much  to  do  with  the  success  of  the  journal 
istic  magazine.  Yet  it  may  be  stated,  with  equal  truth, 
that  the  rapid  advance  in  the  average  intelligence  of 
the  American  public  as  a  whole  made  a  market  for 
a  super-newspaper  in  which  nothing  was  hurried  and 
everything  well  done.  The  contributions  to  literature 
through  this  new  journalism  have  been  at  least  as  great 
during  the  period  of  its  existence  as  from  the  "quality" 
magazine,  the  contributions  toward  the  support  of 
American  authors  much  greater.  Like  all  good  jour 
nalism,  it  has  included  real  literature  when  it  could  get 
and  "get  away  with  it." 


The  Family  Magazine  137 

Birth,  however,  in  the  literary  as  in  the  animal  world, 
is  exhausting  and  often  leaves  the  parent  in  a  debility 
which  may  lead  to  death.  The  periodical  essay  of  the 
eighteenth  century  bore  the  novel  of  character,  and 
died;  the  Gothic  tale  of  a  later  date  perished  of  the 
short  story  to  which  it  gave  its  heart  blood.  The 
family  magazine  of  the  literary  order  has  been  debile, 
so  radical  critics  charge,  since  its  journalistic  offspring 
began  to  sweep  America.  Shall  it  die? 

By  no  means.  An  America  without  the  illustrated 
literary  magazine,  dignified,  respectable,  certain  to  con 
tain  something  that  a  reader  of  taste  can  peruse  with 
pleasure,  would  be  an  unfamiliar  America.  And  it 
would  be  a  barer  America.  In  spite  of  our  brood  of 
special  magazines  for  the  literati  and  the  advanced, 
which  Mr.  Ford  Madox  Hueffer  praises  so  warmly,  we 
are  not  so  well  provided  with  the  distributive  machin 
ery  for  a  national  culture  as  to  flout  a  recognized  agency 
with  a  gesture  and  a  sneer.  But  the  family  magazine 
has  undeniably  lost  its  vigorous  appeal,  and  must  be 
reinvigorated.  The  malady  is  due  to  no  slackening  of 
literary  virility  in  the  country;  indeed  there  has  prob 
ably  not  been  so  much  literary  energy  in  the  country 
since  the  'forties  as  now — not  nearly  so  much.  Nor  is 
it  due  to  a  lack  of  good  readers.  Nor,  in  my  opinion, 
to  the  competition  of  the  journalistic  magazine.  The 
literary  magazine  does  not  compete,  or  at  least  ought 
not  to  compete,  with  its  offspring,  for  it  appeals  either 
to  a  different  audience  or  to  different  tastes. 

Roughly  stated,  the  trouble  is  that  the  public  for 


138  On  the  American  Tradition 

these  excellent  magazines  has  changed,  and  they  have 
not.  Their  public  always  was,  and  is,  the  so-called 
"refined"  home  public.  Homes  have  changed,  espe 
cially  "refined"  homes,  and  a  new  home  means  a  new 
public. 

The  refined  home  nowadays  has  been  to  college. 
(There  are  a  million  college  graduates  now  in  the 
United  States.)  Forty  years  ago  only  scattered  mem 
bers  had  gone  beyond  the  school.  I  do  not  propose  to 
exaggerate  the  influence  upon  intelligence  of  a  college 
education.  It  is  possible,  nay,  it  is  common,  to  go 
through  college  and  come  out  in  any  real  sense  unedu 
cated.  But  it  is  not  possible  to  pass  through  college, 
even  as  a  professional  amateur  in  athletics  or  as  an 
inveterate  flapper,  without  rubbing  off  the  insulation 
here  and  there,  without  knowing  what  thought  is  stir 
ring,  what  emotions  are  poignant,  what  ideas  are 
dominant  among  the  fraction  of  humanity  that  leads  us. 
Refined  homes  may  not  be  better  or  happier  than  they 
used  to  be,  but  if  they  are  intellectual  at  all,  they  are 
more  vigorously  intellectual. 

This  means  at  the  simplest  that  home  readers  of  the 
kind  I  have  been  describing  want  stimulating  food,  not 
what  our  grandfathers  used  to  call  "slops."  Some 
times  they  feed  exclusively  upon  highly  spiced  journal 
ism,  but  if  they  are  literary  in  their  tastes  they  will 
be  less  content  with  merely  literary  stories,  with  articles 
that  are  too  solid  to  be  good  journalism,  yet  too  popu 
lar  to  be  profound,  less  content,  in  short,  with  dignity 
as  a  substitute  for  force. 


The  Family  Magazine  139 

What  should  be  done  about  it  specifically  is  a  ques 
tion  for  editors  to  answer.  But  this  may  be  said.  If 
the  old  literary  omnibus  is  to  continue,  as  it  deserves, 
to  hold  the  center  of  the  roadway,  then  it  must  be 
driven  with  some  vigor  of  the  intellect  to  match  the 
vigor  of  news  which  has  carried  its  cheaper  contempo 
rary  fast  and  far.  By  definition  it  cannot  embrace  a 
cause  or  a  thesis,  like  the  weeklies,  and  thank  Heaven 
for  that!  It  is  clearly  unsafe  to  stand  upon  mere  dig 
nity,  respectability,  or  cost.  That  way  lies  decadence 
— such  as  overcame  the  old  Quarterlies,  the  Annuals, 
and  the  periodical  essayists.  Vigor  it  must  get,  of  a 
kind  naturally  belonging  to  its  species,  not  violent,  not 
raucous,  not  premature.  It  must  recapture  its  public, 
and  this  is  especially  the  "old  American"  (which  does 
not  mean  the  Anglo-Saxon)  element  in  our  mingled 
nation. 

These  old  Americans  are  not  moribund  by  any 
means,  and  it  is  ridiculous  to  suppose,  as  some  recent 
importations  in  criticism  do,  that  a  merely  respectable 
magazine  will  represent  them.  A  good  many  of  them, 
to  be  sure,  regard  magazines  as  table  decorations,  and 
for  such  a  clientele  some  one  some  day  will  publish  a 
monthly  so  ornamental  that  it  will  be  unnecessary  to 
read  it  in  order  to  share  its  beneficent  influences.  The 
remainder  are  intellectualized,  and  many  of  them  are 
emancipated  from  the  conventions  of  the  last  genera 
tion,  if  not  from  those  of  their  own.  These  demand  a 
new  vitality  of  brain,  emotion,  and  spirit  in  their  liter 
ary  magazine,  and  it  must  be  given  to  them. 


140  On  the  American  Tradition 

No  better  proof  of  all  this  could  be  sought  than  the 
renaissance  in  our  own  times  of  the  reviews  and  the 
weeklies,  probably  the  most  remarkable  phenomenon 
in  the  history  of  American  publishing  since  the  birth 
of  yellow  journalism.  By  the  weeklies  I  do  not  mean 
journals  like  The  Outlook,  The  Independent,  Vanity 
Fair,  which  are  merely  special  varieties  of  the  typically 
American  magazine.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  The  New 
Republic,  The  Nation,  The  Freeman,  The  Weekly  Re 
view  in  its  original  form,  periodicals  formed  upon  an 
old  English  model,  devoted  to  the  spreading  of  opinion, 
and  consecrated  to  the  propagation  of  intelligence. 
The  success  of  these  weeklies  has  been  out  of  propor 
tion  to  their  circulation.  Like  the  old  Nation,  which 
in  a  less  specialized  form  was  their  predecessor,  they 
have  distinctly  affected  American  thinking,  and  may 
yet  affect  our  action  in  politics,  education,  and  social 
relations  generally.  They  are  pioneers,  with  the  faults 
of  intellectual  pioneers,  over-seriousness,  over-em 
phasis,  dogmatism,  and  intolerance.  Yet  it  may  be  said 
fairly  that  their  chief  duty,  as  with  the  editorial  pages 
of  newspapers,  is  to  be  consistently  partisan.  At  least 
they  have  proved  that  the  American  will  take  thinking 
when  he  can  get  it.  And  by  inference,  one  assumes 
that  he  will  take  strong  feeling  and  vigorous  truth  in  his 
literary  magazines. 

The  reviews  also  show  how  the  wind  is  blowing.  The 
review,  so-called,  is  a  periodical  presenting  articles  of 
some  length,  and  usually  critical  in  character,  upon  the 
political,  social,  and  literary  problems  of  the  day.  The 


The  Family  Magazine  141 

distinction  of  the  review  is  that  its  sober  form  and  not 
too  frequent  appearance  enable  it  to  give  matured 
opinion  with  space  enough  to  develop  it. 

Clearly  a  successful  review  must  depend  upon  a 
clientele  with  time  and  inclination  to  be  seriously  in 
terested  in  discussion,  and  that  is  why  the  review,  until 
recently,  has  best  flourished  in  England  where  it  was 
the  organ  of  a  governing  class.  In  America,  an  in 
tellectual  class  who  felt  themselves  politically  and  so 
cially  responsible,  has  been  harder  to  discover.  We 
had  one  in  the  early  days  of  the  Republic,  when  The 
North  American  Review  was  founded.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  we  are  developing  another  now  and  have  seen  The 
Yale  Review,  the  late  lamented  Unpartisan  Review, 
and  others  join  The  North  American,  fringed,  so  to 
speak,  by  magazines  of  excerpt  (of  which  much  might 
be  written),  such  as  The  Review  of  Reviews,  Current 
Opinion,  and  The  Literary  Digest,  in  which  the  func 
tion  of  the  review  is  discharged  for  the  great  community 
that  insists  upon  reading  hastily. 

The  review  has  come  to  its  own  with  the  war  and 
reconstruction;  which,  considering  its  handicaps,  is  an 
other  argument  that  the  family  magazine  should  heed 
the  sharpening  of  the  American  intellect.  But,  except 
for  the  strongest  members  of  the  family,  it  is  still 
struggling,  and  still  dependent  for  long  life  upon  cheap 
ness  of  production  rather  than  breadth  of  appeal. 

The  difficulty  is  not  so  much  with  the  readers  as  the 
writers.  The  review  must  largely  depend  upon  the 
specialist  writer  (who  alone  has  the  equipment  for 


142  On  the  American  Tradition 

specialist  writing),  and  the  American  specialist  cannot 
usually  write  well  enough  to  command  general  intelli 
gent  attention.  This  is  particularly  noticeable  in  the 
minor  reviews  where  contributions  are  not  paid  for 
and  most  of  the  writing  is,  in  a  sense,  amateur,  but  it 
holds  good  in  the  magazines  and  the  national  reviews 
also.  The  specialist  knows  his  politics,  his  biology, 
or  his  finance  as  well  as  his  English  or  French  con 
temporary,  but  he  cannot  digest  his  subject  into  words 
— he  can  think  into  it,  but  not  out  of  it,  and  so  cannot 
write  acceptably  for  publication.  Hence  in  science 
particularly,  but  also  in  biography,  in  literary  criticism, 
and  less  often  in  history,  we  have  to  depend  frequently 
upon  English  pens  for  our  illumination. 

The  reasons  for  this  very  serious  deficiency,  much 
more  serious  from  every  point  of  view  than  the  special 
ists  realize,  are  well  known  to  all  but  the  specialists, 
and  I  do  not  propose  to  enter  into  them  here.  My  point 
is  that  this  very  defect,  which  has  made  it  so  difficult 
to  edit  a  valid  and  interesting  review  (and  so  creditable 
to  succeed  as  we  have  in  several  instances  succeeded), 
is  a  brake  also  upon  the  family  magazine  in  its  attempt 
to  regain  virility.  The  newspaper  magazines  have  cor 
nered  the  market  for  clever  reporters  who  tap  the  reser 
voirs  of  special  knowledge  and  then  spray  it  acceptably 
upon  the  public.  This  is  good  as  far  as  it  goes,  but 
does  not  go  far.  The  scholars  must  serve  us  them 
selves — and  are  too  often  incapable. 

Editorial  embarrassments  are  increased,  however,  by 
the  difficulty  of  finding  these  intellectualized  old  Amer- 


The  Family  Magazine  143 

leans  who  have  drifted  away  from  the  old  magazines 
and  are  being  painfully  collected  in  driblets  by  the 
weeklies  and  the  reviews.  They  do  not,  unfortunately 
for  circulation,  all  live  in  a  London,  or  Paris.  They 
are  scattered  in  towns,  cities,  university  communities, 
lonely  plantations,  all  over  a  vast  country.  Probably 
that  intellectualized  public  upon  which  all  good  maga 
zines  as  well  as  all  good  reviews  must  depend,  has  not 
yet  become  so  stratified  and  homogeneous  after  the 
upheavals  of  our  generation  that  a  commercial  success 
of  journalistic  magnitude  is  possible,  but  it  can  and 
must  be  found. 

The  success  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly  in  finding  a 
sizable  and  homogeneous  public  through  the  country  is 
interesting  in  just  this  connection.  It  has,  so  it  is  gen 
erally  understood,  been  very  much  a  question  of  find 
ing — of  going  West  after  the  departing  New  Englander 
and  his  children,  and  hunting  him  out  with  the  goods 
his  soul  desired.  One  remembers  the  Yankee  peddlers 
who  in  the  old  days  penetrated  the  frontier  with  the 
more  material  products  of  New  England,  pans,  alma 
nacs,  and  soap.  But  an  observer  must  also  note  a 
change  in  the  character  of  The  Atlantic  itself,  how  it 
has  gradually  changed  from  a  literary  and  political  re 
view,  to  a  literary  and  social  magazine,  with  every  ele 
ment  of  the  familiar  American  type  except  illustrations 
and  a  profusion  of  fiction;  how  in  the  attempt  to  be 
come  more  interesting  without  becoming  journalistic  it 
has  extended  its  operations  to  cover  a  wider  and  wider 
arc  of  human  appeal.  It  has  both  lost  and  gained  in 


144  On  the  American  Tradition 

the  transformation,  but  it  has  undoubtedly  proved  it 
self  adaptable  and  therefore  alive.  This  is  not  an 
argument  that  the  reviews  should  become  magazines 
and  that  the  old-line  magazine  should  give  up  special 
izing  in  pictures  and  in  fiction.  Of  course  not.  It  is 
simply  more  proof  that  vigor,  adaptability,  and  a  keen 
sense  of  existing  circumstances  are  the  tonics  they  also 
need.  The  weekly  lacks  balance,  the  review,  profes 
sional  skill  in  the  handling  of  serious  subjects,  the 
family  magazine,  a  willingness  to  follow  the  best  public 
taste  wherever  it  leads. 

It  has  been  very  difficult  in  this  discussion,  which  I 
fear  has  resembled  a  shot-gun  charge  rather  than  a  rifle 
bullet,  to  keep  the  single  aim  I  have  had  in  mind.  The 
history  of  the  periodical  in  American  literary  thinking 
has  not  yet  been  written.  The  history  of  American 
literature  has  but  just  been  begun.  My  object  has  been 
to  put  the  spotlight  for  a  moment  upon  the  typical 
American  magazine,  with  just  enough  of  its  environ 
ment  to  make  a  background.  What  is  seen  there  can 
best  be  summarized  by  a  comparison.  The  American 
weekly  is  like  the  serious  American  play  of  the  period. 
It  has  an  over-emphasis  upon  lesson,  bias,  thesis,  point. 
The  review  is  like  much  American  poetry.  It  is  worthy, 
and  occasionally  admirable,  but  as  a  type  it  is  weak 
ened  by  amateur  mediocrity  in  the  art  of  writing.  The 
family  magazine  is  like  the  American  short  story.  It 
has  conventionalized  into  an  often  successful  immo 
bility.  Both  must  move  again,  become  flexible,  vigor 
ous,  or  their  date  will  be  upon  them.  And  the  family 


The  Family  Magazine  145 

magazine,  the  illustrated  literary  magazine,  is  the  most 
interesting  vehicle  of  human  expression  and  interpreta 
tion  that  we  Americans  have  created.  With  a  new  and 
greater  success,  it  will  draw  all  our  other  efforts  with 
it.  If  it  fails,  hope  for  the  interesting  review,  the  well- 
balanced  weekly,  is  precarious.  If  they  all  submerge, 
we  who  like  to  read  with  discrimination  and  gusto  will 
have  to  take  to  books  as  an  exclusive  diet,  or  make  our 
choice  between  boredom  and  journalism. 


Ill 

The  New  Generation 


The  Young  Romantics 

WE  have  talked  about  the  younger  generation  as  if 
youth  were  a  new  phenomenon  that  had  to  be  named 
and  described,  like  a  strange  animal  in  the  Garden  of 
Eden.  No  wonder  that  our  juniors  have  become  self- 
conscious  and  have  begun  to  defend  themselves. 
Nevertheless,  the  generation  born  after  the  'eighties 
has  had  an  experience  unique  in  our  era.  It  has  been 
urged,  first  by  men  and  then  by  events,  to  discredit  the 
statements  of  historians,  the  pictures  of  poets  and  nov 
elists,  and  it  has  accepted  the  challenge.  The  result  is 
a  literature  which  speaks  for  the  younger  writers  bet 
ter,  perhaps,  than  they  speak  for  themselves,  and  this 
literature  no  reader  whose  brain  is  still  flexible  can 
afford  to  neglect;  for  to  pass  by  youth  for  maturity  is 
sooner  or  later  to  lose  step  with  life. 

In  recent  decades  the  novel  especially,  but  also 
poetry,  has  drifted  toward  biography  and  autobiog 
raphy.  The  older  poets,  who  yesterday  were  the 
younger  poets,  such  men  as  Masters,  Robinson,  Frost, 
Lindsay,  have  passed  from  lyric  to  biographic  narra 
tive;  the  younger  poets  more  and  more  write  of  them 
selves.  In  the  novel  the  trend  is  even  more  marked. 
An  acute  critic,  Mr.  Wilson  Follett,  has  recently  noted 
that  the  novel  of  class  or  social  consciousness,  which 
only  ten  years  ago  those  who  teach  literature  were  dis- 

149 


150  The  New  Generation 

cussing  as  the  latest  of  late  developments,  has  already 
given  way  to  a  vigorous  rival.  It  has  yielded  room,  if 
not  given  place,  to  the  novel  of  the  discontented  per 
son.  The  young  men,  and  in  a  less  degree  the  young 
women,  especially  in  America,  where  the  youngest  gen 
eration  is;  I  believe,  more  vigorous  than  elsewhere, 
have  taken  to  biographical  fiction.  Furthermore,  what 
began  as  biography,  usually  of  a  youth  trying  to  dis 
cover  how  to  plan  his  career,  has  drifted  more  and  more 
toward  autobiography — an  autobiography  of  discon 
tent. 

There  is,  of  course,  nothing  particularly  new  about 
biographical  fiction.  There  is  nothing  generically  new 
about  the  particular  kind  of  demi-autobiographies  that 
the  advanced  are  writing  just  now.  The  last  two  dec 
ades  have  been  rich  in  stories  that  need  only  a  set  of 
notes  to  reveal  their  approximate  faithfulness  to  things 
that  actually  happened.  But  there  is  an  emphasis  upon 
revolt  and  disillusion  and  confusion  in  these  latest  nov 
els  that  is  new.  They  are  no  longer  on  the  defensive, 
no  longer  stories  of  boys  struggling  to  adapt  themselves 
to  a  difficult  world  (men  of  forty-odd  still  write  such 
stories) ;  their  authors  are  on  the  offensive,  and  with  a 
reckless  desire  to  accomplish  their  objectives,  they 
shower  us  with  such  a  profusion  of  detail,  desert  the 
paths  of  use  and  wont  in  fiction  so  freely,  and  so  often 
disregard  the  comfort,  not  to  speak  of  the  niceties,  of 
the  reader,  that  "the  young  realists"  has  seemed  a  fair, 
although,  as  I  think,  a  misleading  title,  for  their  au 
thors.  To  a  critic  they  are  most  interesting,  for  the 


The  Young  Romantics  151 

novel  of  the  alleged  young  realist  is  like  a  fresh  country 
boy  on  a  football  field,  powerful,  promising,  and  utterly 
wasteful  of  its  strength. 

Recent  American  literature  has  been  especially  rich 
in  such  novels.  There  was,  for  example,  Fitzgerald's 
ragged,  but  brilliant,  "This  Side  of  Paradise,"  which 
conducted  aimless  and  expansive  youth  from  childhood 
through  college.  There  was  the  much  more  impressive 
"Main  Street/'  biographic  in  form,  but  with  teeth  set 
on  edge  in  revolt.  There  was  the  vivid  and  ill-con 
trolled  sex  novel  "Erik  Dorn,"  and  Evelyn  Scott's  "The 
Narrow  House,"  in  which  the  miseries  of  a  young  girl 
caught  in  the  squalid  and  the  commonplace  had  their 
airing.  There  was  Stephen  Benet's  "The  Beginning  of 
Wisdom,"  where  the  revolt  was  a  poet's,  and  the  real 
ist's  detail  selected  from  beauty  instead  of  from  ugli 
ness;  and  Aikman's  "Zell,"  in  which  youth  rubs  its  sore 
shoulders  against  city  blocks  instead  of  university 
quadrangles.  There  was  Dos  Passos's  "Three  Soldiers," 
in  which  the  boy  hero  is  crushed  by  the  war  machine 
his  elders  have  made.  These  are  type  examples,  pos 
sibly  not  the  best,  certainly  not  the  worst,  drawn  from 
the  workshops  of  the  so-called  young  realists. 

What  is  the  biography  of  this  modern  youth?  His 
father,  in  the  romantic  'nineties,  usually  conquered  the 
life  of  his  elders,  seldom  complained  of  it,  never  spurned 
it.  His  son-in-the-novel  is  born  into  a  world  of  intense 
sensation,  usually  disagreeable.  Instead  of  a  "Peter 
Ibbetson"  boyhood,  he  encounters  disillusion  after  dis 
illusion.  At  the  age  of  seven  or  thereabout  he  sees 


i$2  The  New.  Generation 

through  his  parents  and  characterizes  them  in  a  phrase. 
At  fourteen  he  sees  through  his  education  and  begins 
to  dodge  it.  At  eighteen  he  sees  through  morality  and 
steps  over  it.  At  twenty  he  loses  respect  for  his  home 
town,  and  at  twenty-one  discovers  that  our  social  and 
economic  system  is  ridiculous.  At  twenty- three  his 
story  ends  because  the  author  has  run  through  society 
to  date  and  does  not  know  what  to  do  next.  Life  is 
ahead  of  the  hero,  and  presumably  a  new  society  of 
his  own  making.  This  latter,  however,  does  not  ap 
pear  in  any  of  the  books,  and  for  good  reasons. 

In  brief,  this  literature  of  the  youngest  generation  is 
a  literature  of  revolt,  which  is  not  surprising,  but  also 
a  literature  characterized  by  a  minute  and  painful  ex 
amination  of  environment.  Youth,  in  the  old  days, 
when  it  rebelled,  escaped  to  romantic  climes  or  ad 
venturous  experience  from  a  world  which  some  one  else 
had  made  for  it.  That  is  what  the  hacks  of  the  movies 
and  the  grown-up  children  who  write  certain  kinds  of 
novels  are  still  doing.  But  true  youth  is  giving  us  this 
absorbed  examination  of  all  possible  experiences  that 
can  come  to  a  boy  or  girl  who  does  not  escape  from 
every-day  life,  this  unflattering  picture  of  a  world  that 
does  not  fit,  worked  out  with  as  much  evidence  as  if 
each  novel  were  to  be  part  of  a  brief  of  youth  against 
society.  Indeed,  the  implied  argument  is  often  more 
important  than  the  story,  when  there  is  a  story.  And 
the  argument  consists  chiefly  of  "this  happened  to  me/' 
"I  saw  this  and  did  not  like  it,"  "I  was  driven  to  this 
or  that"  until  the  mass  of  circumstantial  incident  and 


The  Young  Romantics  153 

sensation  reminds  one  of  the  works  of  Zola  and  the 
scientific  naturalists  who  half  a  century  ago  tried  to 
put  society  as  an  organism  into  fiction  and  art. 

No  better  example  has  been  given  us  than  Dos 
Passos's  "Three  Soldiers,"  a  book  that  would  be  tire 
some  (and  is  tiresome  to  many)  in  its  night  after  night 
and  day  after  day  crammed  with  every  possible  un 
pleasant  sensation  and  experience  that  three  young 
men  could  have  had  in  the  A.  E.  F.  And  that  the  ex 
periences  recorded  were  unpleasant  ones,  forced  upon 
youth,  not  chosen  by  its  will,  is  thoroughly  characteris 
tic.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  rebellious  pacifism  in 
this  book,  it  is  questionable  whether  readers  who  had 
not  been  in  France,  and  so  could  not  relish  the  vivid 
reality  of  the  descriptions,  would  have  read  to  the 
end  of  the  story. 

The  cause  of  all  this  is  interesting,  more  interesting 
than  some  of  the  results.  The  full  result  we  can 
scarcely  judge  yet,  for  despite  signs  of  power  and 
beauty  and  originality,  only  one  or  two  of  these  books 
have  reached  artistic  maturity;  but  we  can  prepare  to 
comprehend  it. 

Here,  roughly,  is  what  I  believe  has  happened,  and 
if  I  confine  my  conclusions  to  fiction,  it  is  not  because 
I  fail  to  realize  that  the  effects  are  and  will  be  far 
broader. 

The  youths  of  our  epoch  were  born  and  grew  up  in 
a  period  of  criticism  and  disintegration.  They  were 
children  when  the  attack  upon  orthodox  conceptions  of 
society  succeeded  the  attack  upon  orthodox  conceptions 


154  The  New  Generation 

of  religion.  We  know  how  "the  conflict  between  re 
ligion  and  science"  reverberated  in  nineteenth-century 
literature  and  shaped  its  ends.  The  new  attack  was 
quite  different.  Instead  of  scrutinizing  a  set  of  beliefs, 
it  scrutinized  a  method  of  living.  Insensibly,  the  in 
telligent  youth  became  aware  that  the  distribution  of 
wealth  and  the  means  of  getting  it  were  under  attack; 
that  questions  were  raised  as  to  the  rights  of  property 
and  the  causes  and  necessity  of  war.  Soon  moral  con 
cepts  began  to  be  shaken.  He  learned  that  prostitu 
tion  might  be  regarded  as  an  economic  evil.  He  found 
that  sex  morality  was  regarded  by  some  as  a  useful 
taboo;  psychology  taught  him  that  repression  could  be 
as  harmful  as  excess;  the  collapse  of  the  Darwinian 
optimists,  who  believed  that  all  curves  were  upward, 
left  him  with  the  inner  conviction  that  everything,  in 
cluding  principle,  was  in  a  state  of  flux.  And  his  in 
tellectual  guides,  first  Shaw,  and  then,  when  Shaw  be 
came  vieux  jeu,  De  Gourmont,  favored  that  conclusion. 

Then  came  the  war,  which  at  a  stroke  destroyed  his 
sense  of  security  and  with  that  his  respect  for  the 
older  generation  that  had  guaranteed  his  world.  Propa 
ganda  first  enlightened  him  as  to  the  evil  meanings  of 
imperialistic  politics,  and  afterward  left  him  suspicious 
of  all  politics.  Cruelty  and  violent  change  became 
familiar.  He  had  seen  civilization  disintegrate  on  the 
battlefield,  and  was  prepared  to  find  it  shaky  at  home. 

Then  he  resumed,  or  began,  his  reading  and  his  writ 
ing.  His  reading  of  fiction  and  poetry,  especially  when 
it  dealt  with  youth,  irritated  him.  The  pictures  of 


The  Young  Romantics  155 

life  in  Dickens,  in  "The  Idylls  of  the  King,"  in  the 
Henty  books,  in  the  popular  romantic  novels  and  the 
conventional  social  studies,  did  not  correspond  with  his 
pictures.  They  in  no  sense  corresponded  with  the  de 
scriptions  of  society  given  by  the  new  social  thinkers 
whose  ideas  had  leaked  through  to  him.  They  did 
not  square  with  his  own  experience.  "The  Charge  of 
the  Light  Brigade"  rang  false  to  a  member  of  the  26th 
Division.  Quiet  stories  of  idyllic  youth  in  New  Eng 
land  towns  jarred  upon  the  memories  of  a  class-con 
scious  youngster  in  modern  New  York.  Youth  began 
to  scrutinize  its  own  past,  and  then  to  write,  with  a 
passionate  desire  to  tell  the  real  truth,  all  of  it,  pleas 
ant,  unpleasant,  or  dirty,  regardless  of  narrative 
relevance. 

The  result  was  this  new  naturalism,  a  propaganda 
of  the  experience  of  youth,  where  the  fact  that  mother's 
face  was  ugly,  not  angelic,  is  supremely  important,  more 
important  than  the  story,  just  because  it  was  the  truth. 
And  as  the  surest  way  to  get  all  the  truth  is  to  tell  your 
own  story,  every  potential  novelist  wrote  his  own  story, 
enriching  it,  where  sensation  was  thin,  from  the  biog 
raphies  of  his  intimates.  Rousseau  was  reborn  with 
out  his  social  philosophy.  Defoe  was  reincarnated, 
but  more  anxious  now  to  describe  precisely  what  hap 
pened  to  him  than  to  tell  an  effective  tale. 

This  is  a  very  different  kind  of  truth-telling  from, 
let  us  say,  Mrs.  Wharton's  in  "The  Age  of  Innocence" 
or  Zona  Gale's  in  "Miss  Lulu  Bett."  It  does  not  spring 
from  a  desire  to  tell  the  truth  about  human  nature. 


156  The  New  Generation 

These  asserters  of  youth  are  not  much  interested  in 
any  human  nature  except  their  own,  not  much,  indeed, 
in  that,  but  only  in  the  friction  between  their  ego  and 
the  world.  It  is  passionate  truth,  which  is  very  dif 
ferent  from  cool  truth;  it  is  subjective,  not  objective; 
romantic,  not  classical,  to  use  the  old  terms  which  few 
nowadays  except  Professor  Babbitt's  readers  under 
stand.  Nor  is  it  the  truth  that  Wells,  let  us  say,  or,  to 
use  a  greater  name,  Tolstoy  was  seeking.  It  is  not 
didactic  or  even  interpretative,  but  only  the  truth  about 
the  difference  between  the  world  as  it  is  and  the  world 
as  it  was  expected  to  be;  an  impressionistic  truth;  in 
fact,  the  truth  about  my  experiences,  which  is  very 
different  from  what  I  may  sometime  think  to  be  the 
truth  about  mankind. 

It  will  be  strange  if  nothing  very  good  comes  from 
this  impulse,  for  the  purpose  to  "tell  the  world"  that 
my  vision  of  America  is  startlingly  different  from  what 
I  have  read  about  America  is  identical  with  that  break 
with  the  past  which  has  again  and  again  been  prelude 
to  a  new  era.  I  do  not  wish  to  discuss  the  alleged  new 
era.  Like  the  younger  generation,  it  has  been  dis 
cussed  too  much  and  is  becoming  evidently  self-con 
scious.  But  if  the  autobiographical  novel  is  to  be  re 
garded  as  its  literary  herald  (and  they  are  all  prophetic 
Declarations  of  Independence),  then  we  may  ask  what 
has  the  new  generation  given  us  so  far  in  the  way  of 
literary  art. 

Apparently  the  novel  and  the  short  story,  as  we  have 
known  them,  are  to  be  scrapped.  Plot,  which  began  to 


The  Young  Romantics  157 

break  down  with  the  Russians,  has  crumbled  into  a 
maze  of  incident.  You  can  no  longer  assume  that  the 
hero's  encounter  with  a  Gipsy  in  Chapter  II  is  prep 
aration  for  a  tragedy  in  Chapter  XXIX.  In  all  prob 
ability  the  Gipsy  will  never  be  heard  from  again.  She 
is  irrelevant  except  as  a  figment  in  the  author's  mem 
ory,  as  an  incident  in  autobiography.  Setting,  the  old 
familiar  background,  put  on  the  story  like  wall-paper 
on  a  living-room,  has  suffered  a  sea  change  also.  It 
comes  now  by  flashes,  like  a  movie-film.  What  the 
ego  remembers,  that  it  describes,  whether  the  drip  of 
a  faucet  or  the  pimple  on  the  face  of  a  traffic  police 
man.  As  for  character,  there  is  usually  but  one,  the 
hero;  for  the  others  live  only  as  he  sees  them,  and  fade 
out  when  he  looks  away.  If  he  is  highly  sexed,  like 
Erik  Dorn,  the  other  figures  appear  in  terms  of  sex, 
just  as  certain  rays  of  light  will  bring  out  only  one 
color  in  the  objects  they  shine  against. 

The  novel,  in  fact,  has  melted  and  run  down  into  a 
diary,  with  sometimes  no  unity  except  the  personality 
whose  sensations  are  recorded.  Many  of  us  have 
wished  to  see  the  conventional  story  forms  broken  to 
bits.  It  was  getting  so  that  the  first  sentence  of  a 
short  story  or  the  first  chapter  of  a  novel  gave  the 
whole  show  away.  We  welcomed  the  English  stories 
of  a  decade  ago  that  began  to  give  the  complexities  of 
life  instead  of  the  conventions  of  a  plot.  But  this  com 
plete  liquidation  rather  appals  us. 

The  novels  I  have  mentioned  so  far  in  this  article 
have  all  together  not  enough  plot  to  set  up  one  lively 


158  The  New  Generation 

Victorian  novel.  Benet,  Dos  Passos,  Fitzgerald — the 
flood-gates  of  each  mind  have  been  opened,  and  all  that 
the  years  had  dammed  up  bursts  forth  in  a  deluge  of 
waters,  carrying  flotsam  and  jetsam  and  good  things 
and  mud. 

It  is  not  surprising  that,  having  given  up  plot,  these 
writers  escape  from  other  restraints  also.  The  more 
energetic  among  them  revel  in  expression,  and  it  seems 
to  make  little  difference  whether  it  is  the  exquisite 
chiaroscuro  of  Chicago  they  are  describing,  or  spots 
on  a  greasy  apron.  The  less  enthusiastic  are  content 
to  be  as  full  of  gritty  realistic  facts  as  a  fig  of  seeds; 
but  with  all  of  them  everything  from  end  to  beginning, 
from  bottom  to  top,  must  be  said. 

And  just  here  lies  the  explanation  of  the  whole  mat 
ter.  As  one  considers  the  excessive  naturalism  of  the 
young  realists  and  asks  just  why  they  find  it  neces 
sary  to  be  so  excessively,  so  effusively  realistic,  the  con 
viction  is  inborn  that  they  are  not  realists  at  all  as 
Hardy,  Ho  wells,  even  James  were  realists;  they  are 
romanticists  of  a  deep,  if  not  the  deepest,  dye,  even 
the  heartiest  lover  of  sordid  incident  among  them  all. 

I  am  aware,  of  course,  that  "romantic"  is  a  dan 
gerous  word,  more  overworked  than  any  other  in  the 
vocabulary  of  criticism,  and  very  difficult  to  define. 
But  in  contrast  with  its  opposites  it  can  be  made  to 
mean  something  definite.  Now,  the  romanticism  of  the 
juniors  is  not  the  opposite  of  realism;  it  sometimes  em 
braces  realism  too  lovingly  for  the  reader's  comfort. 
But  it  is  the  opposite  of  classicism.  It  is  emotional  ex- 


The  Young  Romantics  159 

pansiveness  as  contrasted  with  the  classic  doctrine  of 
measure  and  restraint.  By  this,  the  older  meaning  of 
romanticism,  we  may  put  a  tag  upon  the  new  men  that 
will  help  to  identify  them.  Their  desire  is  to  free  their 
souls  from  the  restraints  of  circumstance,  to  break 
through  rule  and  convention,  to  let  their  hearts  expand. 

But  they  do  not  fly  into  Byronic  melancholy  or 
Wordsworthian  enthusiasm  for  the  mysterious  ab 
stract;  they  are  far  more  likely  to  fly  away  from  them. 
Byron  and  Wordsworth  do  not  interest  them,  and 
Tennyson  they  hate.  Romantic  in  mood,  they  are 
realistic,  never  classical,  in  their  contact  with  experi 
ence.  In  poetry  they  prefer  free  verse,  in  prose  they 
eschew  grand  phrases  and  sonorous  words.  It  has 
been  the  hard  realism  of  an  unfriendly  world  that  has 
scraped  them  to  the  raw,  and  they  retaliate  by  vividly 
describing  all  the  unpleasant  things  they  remember. 
Taught  by  the  social  philosophers  and  war's  disillusions 
that  Denmark  is  decaying,  they  do  not  escape  to  Cathay 
or  Bohemia,  but  stay  at  home  and  passionately  narrate 
what  Denmark  has  done  to  them.  Romantic  Zolas, 
they  have  stolen  the  weapons  of  realism  to  fight  the 
battle  of  their  ego.  And  the  fact  that  a  few  pause  in 
their  naturalism  to  soar  into  idyllic  description  or  the 
rapture  of  beauty  merely  proves  my  point,  that  they 
are  fundamentally  romantics  seeking  escape,  and  that 
autobiographical  realism  is  merely  romanticism  a  la 
mode. 

Let  us  criticize  it  as  such,  remembering  that  we  may 
be  reading  the  first  characteristic  work  of  a  new  liter- 


160  The  New  Generation 

ary  era.  Let  us  give  over  being  shocked.  Those  who 
were  shocked  by  Byron,  the  apostle  of  expansiveness, 
merely  encouraged  him  to  be  more  shocking.  Nor  is  it 
any  use  to  sit  upon  the  hydrant  of  this  new  expansive- 
ness.  If  a  youth  desires  to  tell  the  world  what  has 
happened  to  him,  he  must  be  allowed  to  do  so,  pro 
vided  he  has  skill  and  power  enough  to  make  us  listen. 
And  these  juniors  have  power  even  when  skill  has  not 
yet  been  granted  them.  What  is  needed  is  a  hose  to 
stop  the  waste  of  literary  energy,  to  conserve  and  direct 
it.  Call  for  a  hose,  then,  as  much  as  you  please,  but 
do  not  try  to  stop  the  waters  with  your  Moses's  rod 
of  conservative  indignation. 

It  is  no  crime  to  be  a  romantic, — it  is  a  virtue,  if 
that  is  the  impulse  of  the  age, — but  it  is  a  shame  to  be 
a  wasteful  romantic.  Waste  has  always  been  the  ro 
mantic  vice — waste  of  emotion,  waste  of  words,  the 
waste  that  comes  from  easy  profusion  of  sentiment  and 
the  formlessness  that  permits  it.  Think  of  "The  Ex 
cursion,"  of  Southey,  and  of  the  early  poems  of  Shelley, 
of  Scott  at  his  wordiest.  And  these  writers  also  are 
wasteful,  in  proportion  to  their  strength. 

They  waste  especially  their  imagination.  Books  like 
"The  Three  Soldiers"  spill  over  in  all  directions — spill 
into  poetry,  philosophy,  into  endless  conversation,  and 
into  everything  describable.  Books  like  "The  Begin 
ning  of  Wisdom"  are  still  more  wasteful.  Here  is  the 
poignant  biography  of  a  boy  who  loves  his  environment 
even  when  it  slays  him,  plus  a  collection  of  prose  idylls, 


The  Young  Romantics  161 

plus  a  group  of  poems,  plus  a  good  piece  of  special  re 
porting,  plus  an  assortment  of  brilliant  letters;  and 
imbedded  in  the  mass,  like  a  thread  of  gold  in  a  tangle 
of  yarn,  as  fresh  and  exquisite  a  love-story  as  we  have 
had  in  recent  English.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  that 
all  these  elements  cannot  be  woven  into,  made  relevant 
to,  a  theme,  a  story.  Stendhal,  himself  a  romantic,  as 
these  men  are  romantics,  could  do  it.  But  our  ro 
mantics  do  not  so  weave  them;  they  fling  them  out  as 
contributions  to  life's  evidence,  they  fail  to  relate  them 
to  a  single  interpretation  of  living,  and  half  of  the  best 
incidents  are  waste,  and  clog  the  slow-rolling  wheels 
of  the  story. 

They  waste  their  energy  also.  So  keenly  do  they 
love  their  own  conception  of  true  living  that  their  im 
aginations  dwell  with  a  kind  of  horrid  fascination  upon 
the  ugly  things  that  thwart  them.  Hence  in  a  novel 
like  "Main  Street,"  the  interest  slackens  as  one  begins 
to  feel  that  the  very  vividness  of  the  story  comes  from 
a  vision  strained  and  aslant,  unable  to  tear  eyes  from 
the  things  that  have  cramped  life  instead  of  expanding 
it.  The  things  that  these  writers  love  in  life  often  they 
never  reach  until  the  last  chapter,  and  about  them 
they  have  little  to  say,  being  exhausted  by  earlier 
virulence. 

Waste,  of  course,  is  a  symptom  of  youth  and  vitality 
as  well  as  of  unbridled  romanticism,  but  that  is  no 
reason  for  praising  a  book  because  it  is  disorderly. 
We  do  not  praise  young,  vigorous  states  for  being  dis 
orderly.  Life  may  not  be  orderly,  but  literature  must 


1 62  The  New  Generation 

be.  That  is  a  platitude  which  it  seems  necessary  to 
repeat. 

It  is  difficult  to  estimate  absolute  achievement  ex 
cept  across  time,  and  the  time  has  been  too  brief  to 
judge  of  the  merits  of  the  young  romanticists.  My 
guess  is  that  some  of  them  will  go  far.  But  the  diag 
nosis  at  present  seems  to  show  an  inflammation  of  the 
ego.  The  new  generation  is  discovering  its  soul  by  the 
pain  of  its  bruises,  as  a  baby  is  made  aware  of  its  body 
by  pin-pricks  and  chafes.  It  is  explaining  its  dissatis 
factions  with  more  violence  than  art. 

Therefore  at  present  the  satirists  and  the  educators 
hold  the  best  cards,  and  most  of  them  are  elderly.  No 
one  of  les  jeunes  writes  with  the  skill,  with  the  art,  of 
Mrs.  Wharton,  Miss  Sinclair,  Tarkington,  Galsworthy, 
or  Wells.  It  should  not  long  be  so  in  a  creative  genera 
tion.  In  sheer  emotion,  in  vivid  protest  that  is  not 
merely  didactic,  the  advantage  is  all  with  the  young 
sters.  But  they  waste  it.  They  have  learned  to  criti 
cize  their  elders,  but  not  themselves.  They  have  boy 
cotted  the  books  of  writers  who  were  young  just  be 
fore  themselves,  but  they  have  not  learned  to  put  a 
curb  on  their  own  expansiveness.  We  readers  suffer. 
We  do  not  appreciate  their  talents  as  we  might,  because 
we  lose  our  bearings  in  hectic  words  or  undigested  in 
cident.  We  lose  by  the  slow  realization  of  their  art. 

Youth  is  a  disease  that  cures  itself,  though  some 
times  too  late.  The  criticism  I  have  made,  in  so  far 
as  it  refers  to  youthful  impetuosity,  is  merely  the  sort 
of  thing  that  has  to  be  said  to  every  generation,  and 


The  Young  Romantics  163 

very  loudly  to  the  romantic  ones.  But  if  these  auto- 
biographians  are,  as  I  believe,  expansive  romanticists, 
that  is  of  deeper  significance,  and  my  hope  is  that  the 
definition  may  prove  useful  to  them  as  well  as  to  readers 
who  with  an  amazed  affection  persist  in  following  them 
wherever  they  lead. 


Puritans  All 

WHEN  anything  goes  wrong  in  politics  the  American 
practice  is  to  charge  it  against  the  Administration.  In 
literature  all  grievances  are  attributed  to  the  Puritans. 
If  a  well-written  book  does  not  sell,  it  is  because  the 
Puritans  warped  our  sense  of  beauty;  if  an  honest  dis 
cussion  of  sex  is  attacked  for  indecency,  it  is  the  fault 
of  the  Puritan  inheritance;  if  the  heroes  and  heroines 
of  new  narratives  in  prose  or  verse  jazz  their  way  to 
destruction  or  impotence,  it  is  in  protest  against  the 
Puritans. 

Who  is  this  terrible  Puritan?  Apparently  he  is  all 
America's  ancestor,  and  whether  you  were  born  in  Dela 
ware  or  in  South  Carolina,  in  Montana  or  in  Jugoslavia, 
you  must  adopt  him  as  great-great-grandfather  or 
declare  yourself  alien. 

What  was  he,  or  rather,  what  did  he  stand  for,  and 
inflict  upon  us,  to-day?  Here  there  is  some  confusion. 
According  to  one  set  of  critics  he  is  not  so  much  a 
hater  of  the  arts  as  indifferent  to  their  charms,  not  so 
much  a  Milton  scornful  of  easy  beauty,  as  a  Philistine, 
deaf  and  blind  to  the  esthetic.  But  these  writers  have 
apparently  confounded  Great-great-grandfather  Puri 
tan  with  Grandpa  Victorian,  the  Victorian  that  Mat 
thew  Arnold  scolded  and  Shaw  made  fun  of.  He  is  a 
type  as  different  from  the  real  Puritan  as  the  slum 

164 


Puritans  All  165 

dweller  from  the  primitive  barbarian.  "Milton,  thou 
shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour"  to  flay  such  ignorant 
traducers  of  those  who  knew  at  least  the  beauty  of 
austerity  and  holiness. 

According  to  a  less  numerous  but  more  clear-headed 
group  of  enemies  the  Puritan  is  to  be  censured  chiefly 
for  the  rigidity  of  his  conscience.  He  will  not  let  us 
enjoy  such  "natural"  pleasures  as  mirth,  love,  drink 
ing,  and  idleness  without  a  bitter  antidote  of  remorse. 
He  keeps  books  dull  and  reticent,  makes  plays  virtu 
ously  didactic,  and  irritates  all  but  the  meek  and  the 
godly  into  revolt. 

I  am  not  an  uncritical  admirer  of  the  Puritan, 
although  I  believe  he  is  more  nearly  on  the  side  of  the 
angels  than  is  his  opposite.  I  deprecate  the  smug  vir 
tuosity  which  his  kind  often  favor,  I  dislike  a  vinegar 
morality,  and  am  repelled  by  the  monstrous  egoism  of 
the  idea  that  redeeming  one's  soul  is  such  a  serious 
matter  that  every  moment  spared  from  contemplating 
the  sins  of  others  or  the  pieties  of  oneself  is  irretrievably 
wasted. 

But  I  object  still  more  strongly  to  the  anti-Puritans. 
Those  rebels  who  make  unconventionality  their  only 
convention,  with  their  distrust  of  duty  because  they 
see  no  reason  to  be  dutiful,  and  their  philosophic  nihil 
ism,  which  comes  to  this,  that  all  things  having  been 
proved  false  except  their  own  desires,  their  desires  be 
come  a  philosophy,  those  anti-Puritans,  as  one  sees 
them,  especially  in  plays  and  on  the  stage,  are  an  ob 
streperous,  denying  folk  that  seldom  know  their  own 


1 66  The  New  Generation 

minds  to  the  end  of  the  story.  In  fiction,  distrusting 
what  the  Puritans  call  duty,  they  are  left  gasping 
in  the  last  chapter,  wondering  usually  what  they  are 
to  do  next;  while  the  delightful  lack  of  conscience  that 
makes  the  flappers  audacious  and  the  young  men  so 
unremorsefully  naughty  leads  to  nothing  at  the  end 
but  a  passionate  desire  to  discover  some  new  reason 
for  living  (which  I  take  to  mean,  a  new  conscience) 
even  if  homes  and  social  utility  are  wrecked  in  the 
attempt. 

Why  has  duty  become  so  unpopular  in  American 
literature?  Is  it  because  she  is,  after  all,  just  what 
that  loftiest  if  not  most  impeccable  of  Puritans  called 
her,  stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God?  Is  there 
to  be  no  more  sternness  in  our  morals  now  we  under 
stand  their  psychology,  no  voice  commanding  us  to 
do  this  or  not  to  do  that  because  there  is  a  gulf  set  be 
tween  worth  and  worthlessness?  Is  it  true  that  be 
cause  we  are  not  to  be  damned  for  playing  golf  on  Sun 
day,  nothing  can  damn  us?  That  because  the  rock- 
ribbed  Vermont  ancestor's  idea  of  duty  can  never  be 
ours,  we  have  no  duty  to  acknowledge?  Is  it  true  that 
if  we  cease  being  Puritans  we  can  remain  without  prin 
ciple,  swayed  only  by  impulse  and  events? 

When  these  questions  are  answered  to  the  hilt,  we 
shall  get  something  more  vital  than  anti-Puritanism  in 
modern  American  literature. 


The  Older  Generation 

THE  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters  says  a 
word  for  the  Older  Generation  now  and  then  by  choos 
ing  new  academicians  from  its  ranks.  No  one  else  for 
a  long  while  now  has  been  so  poor  as  to  do  it  reverence. 
Indeed,  the  readers  of  some  of  our  magazines  must 
have  long  since  concluded  that  there  are  no  fathers 
and  mothers  in  the  modern  literary  world,  but  only  self- 
created  heralds  of  the  future  who  do  not  bother  even 
to  be  rebellious  against  a  generation  they  condemn. 

The  older  generation  is  in  a  difficult  situation,  be 
cause,  apparently,  no  one  knows  precisely  who  and 
what  it  is.  The  younger  generation,  of  course,  is  made 
up  of  every  one  who  dislikes  Tennyson,  believes  in 
realism,  reads  De  Gourmont,  and  was  not  responsible 
for  the  war.  That  is  perfectly  definite.  We  are  some 
what  puzzled  by  the  uncounted  hordes  of  the  youthful 
in  appearance  who  support  the  movies,  are  stolidly  con 
servative  in  the  colleges,  never  heard  of  De  Gourmont, 
and  have  forgotten  the  war.  But  perhaps  that  is  some 
other  younger  generation  which  no  one  has  taken  the 
trouble  to  write  about — yet. 

As  for  the  older  generation,  what  actually  is  it,  and 
who  in  reality  are  they?  The  general  impression  seems 
to  be  that  they  are  the  Victorians,  they  are  Howells 
and  his  contemporaries,  they  are  the  men  and  women 

167 


1 68  The  New  Generation 

who  created  the  family  magazine,  invented  morality, 
revived  Puritanism,  and  tried  to  impose  evolution  on  a 
society  that  preferred  devolution  by  international  com 
bat.  But  these  men  are  all  dead,  or  have  ceased  writ 
ing.  They  are  not  our  older  generation.  It  is  true 
that  they  are  famous  and  so  convenient  for  reference, 
but  it  is  not  accurate  nor  fair  to  drag  them  from  their 
graves  for  purposes  of  argument. 

The  true  older  generation,  of  which  one  seldom  hears 
in  current  criticism  except  in  terms  of  abuse,  remains 
to  be  discovered,  and  we  herewith  announce  its  person 
nel,  so  that  the  next  time  the  youthful  writer  excoriates 
it  in  the  abstract  all  may  know  just  whom  he  means. 
Among  the  older  generation  in  American  literature  are 
H.  L.  Mencken  and  Mrs.  Edith  Wharton^  Booth  Tark- 
ington  and  Stuart  P.  Sherman,  Miss  Amy  Lowell  and 
Mr.  Frank  Moore  Colby,  Robert  Frost  and  Edwin 
Arlington  Robinson,  Vachel  Lindsay  and  Carl  Sand 
burg,  Mrs.  Gerould  and  Professor  William  Lyon  Phelps, 
Edgar  Lee  Masters,  Joseph  Hergesheimer,  and  most  of 
the  more  radical  editors  of  New  York.  Here  is  this 
group  of  desiccated  Victorians,  upholders  of  the  ethics 
of  Mr.  Pickwick,  and  the  artistic  theories  of  Bulwer- 
Lytton.  Here  are  the  bogies  of  outworn  conservatism, 
numbered  like  a  football  team.  Mark  their  names,  and 
know  from  now  on  that  most  of  the  books  that  you  have 
supposed  were  solid  in  artistry  and  mature  in  thought, 
though  perhaps  novel  in  tone  or  in  method,  were  writ 
ten  by  the  older  generation. 

Perhaps  when  the  younger  generation  pretend  to  con- 


The  Older  Generation  169 

fuse  their  immediate  predecessors  with  Ruskin  and 
Carlyle,  with  Browning,  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  Long 
fellow,  and  Matthew  Arnold,  they  are  merely  strategic. 
For  it  is  still  dangerous  to  assault  the  citadels  of  the 
great  Victorians  with  no  greater  books  than  the  youth 
ful  volumes  of  1918-1921,  no  matter  how  many 
breaches  the  war  has  left  in  the  walls  of  their  philoso 
phy.  It  is  far  easier  to  assume  that  they  are  still  alive 
in  pallid  survival,  and  to  attack  a  hypothetic  older  gen 
eration,  which,  representing  nothing  real,  can  there 
fore  not  strike  back. 

Let  the  younger  generation  go  back  to  its  muttons, 
let  it  attend  to  its  most  pressing  business,  which  is  to 
create.  It  is  vigorous,  prolific,  and,  to  my  judgment, 
full  of  promise,  but  so  far  has  done  little  or  nothing 
not  summarized  in  these  words.  It  must  pay  its  debt 
to  time  before  it  grows  much  older,  or  go  down  among 
expectations  unrealized.  It  has  few  hours  to  waste 
upon  attacking  an  older  generation  which,  as  it  is  de 
scribed,  does  not  exist  except  in  youthful  imagination, 
a  generation  actually  of  the  middle-aged  which  in  the 
meantime  is  bearing  the  burden  of  invention,  creation, 
revolution  in  art  while  the  youngsters  are  talking. 

I  should  like  to  see  less  about  the  younger  and  more 
of  this  older  generation  in  literary  criticism.  It  is  a 
fresh  subject,  scarcely  touched  by  writers,  and  full  of 
surprises.  The  jaded  reader  should  be  told  that,  in 
spite  of  rumors  to  the  contrary,  the  middle-aged  still 
exist. 


A  Literature  of  Protest 

I  HAVE  pursued  the  discussions  of  the  new  American 
realism  through  university  gatherings  and  literary  in 
quests.  Stripped  of  all  metaphysics  and  relieved  of 
all  subtlety  the  conclusion  of  the  matter  is  inescapable. 
It  is  not  the  realism  of  the  realists,  or  the  freedom  of 
free  verse,  or  the  radicalism  of  the  radical  that  in  it 
self  offends  the  critics,  it  is  the  growing  ugliness  of 
American  literature.  The  harsh  and  often  vulgar  lines 
of  Masters  (so  they  say)  seem  to  disdain  beauty. 
Vachel  Lindsay's  shouted  raptures  are  raucous.  Miss 
Lowell's  polyphonies  have  intellectual  beauty,  but  the 
note  is  sharp,  the  splendors  pyrotechnic.  Robert 
Frost's  restrained  rhythms  are  homely  in  the  single 
line.  The  "advanced"  novelists,  who  win  the  prizes 
and  stir  up  talk,  are  flat  in  style  when  not  muddy  in 
their  English.  They  do  not  lift.  An  eighteenth  cen 
tury  critic  would  call  American  literature  ugly,  or  at 
least  homely,  if  he  dipped  into  its  realities,  rococo  if 
he  did  not. 

This  is  the  sum  of  a  criticism  so  strongly  felt  that 
it  raises  a  barrier  to  appreciation,  almost  a  gate  shut 
against  knowledge  between  the  good  American  readers 
and  the  progressives  in  our  literature.  Sandburg  and 
Lindsay  between  them  will  cause  more  acrimony  in  a 
gathering  of  English  teachers  than  even  Harold  Bell 

170 


A  Literature  of  Protest  171 

Wright.  Miss  Lowell  carries  controversy  with  her, 
triumphantly  riding  upon  it.  Their  critics  wish  form 
as  they  have  known  form,  want  beauty  such  as  they 
possess  in  riper  literatures,  want  maturity,  richness, 
suavity,  grace,  and  the  lift  of  noble  thinking,  nobly  ex 
pressed.  It  may  be  remarked,  in  passing,  that  they 
also  would  like  to  live  in  English  manors  in  gardened 
landscapes  and  have  French  cathedrals  rise  above  their 
perfect  towns! 

It  ought  to  be  clear  that  we  shall  never  get  beauty 
of  this  kind,  or  of  any  absolute  kind,  in  American  writ 
ing  until  there  is  more  beauty  in  American  life.  Amidst 
the  vulgarities  of  signboards,  cries  of  cheap  newspapers, 
noisy  hustle  of  trivial  commercialism,  and  the  flatness 
of  standardized  living,  it  is  hard  to  feel  spiritual  quali 
ties  higher  than  optimism  and  reform.  In  general, 
wherever  we  have  touched  America  we  have  made  it 
uglier,  as  a  necessary  preliminary  perhaps  to  making 
it  anything  at  all,  but  uglier  nevertheless.  There  was 
more  hardship  perhaps  but  also  more  clear  beauty  in 
Colonial  days  than  in  our  own.  More  clear  beauty,  we 
say,  because  the  present  has  its  own  vigorous  beauty, 
more  complex  than  what  went  before,  but  not  yet  clari 
fied  from  the  ugly  elements  that  are  making  it.  The 
forests  and  the  skyscrapers  are  beautiful  in  America, 
but  pretty  much  everything  else  below  and  between  is 
soiled  or  broken  by  progress  and  prosperity. 

And  it  is  of  the  things  in  between,  of  America  in  the 
making,  that  these  new  writers,  whose  lack  of  pure 
beauty  we  deplore,  and  whose  occasional  gratuitous 


172  The  New  Generation 

ugliness  we  dislike,  are  writing.  They  are  protesting 
against  its  sordidness  and  crudity  far  more  effectively 
than  the  cloistered  reader  who  recites  Shelley,  saying 
"Why  can't  they  write  as  he  does."  Like  all  that  is 
human  they  share  the  qualities  of  their  environment, 
like  all  fighters  they  acquire  the  faults  of  the  enemy. 
They  hate,  often  enough,  the  ugliness  which  a  genera 
tion  of  progress  has  implanted  in  their  own  minds. 
They  have  been  educated,  perhaps,  by  the  movies, 
Main  Street  conversation,  formalized  schools,  and  stale 
Methodism,  and  they  hate  their  education.  Or  like 
the  poets  mentioned  above  they  are  moved  by  the 
pathos,  the  injustice,  the  confused  beauty,  the  promise, 
not  of  some  land  of  the  past,  but  of  the  country  under 
their  feet,  and  write  of  what  stirs  them  in  terms  that  fit. 

It  is  only  when  one  understands  this  new  Ameri 
can  writing  to  be  a  literature  of  protest,  that  one  be 
gins  to  sympathize  with  its  purposes,  admire  its  achieve 
ments,  and  be  tolerant  of  its  limitations.  For  such  a 
literature  has  very  definite  limitations.  It  is  prepara 
tive  rather  than  ultimate.  The  spaciousness  of  great 
imagination  is  seldom  in  it,  and  it  lacks  those  grand 
and  simple  conceptions  which  generalize  upon  the 
human  race.  It  is  cluttered  with  descriptions  of  the 
enemy,  it  is  nervous,  or  morbid,  or  excited,  or  over- 
emphatic.  That  it  strikes  out  occasional  sparks  of 
vivid  beauty,  and  has  already  produced  masterpieces 
in  poetry,  is  to  be  wondered  at  and  praised. 

But  some  one  had  to  begin  to  write  of  the  United 
States  as  it  is.  We  could  not  go  on  with  sentimental 


A  Literature  of  Protest  173 

novels  and  spineless  lyrics  forever.  Some  writers  had 
to  refocus  the  instrument  and  look  at  reality  again. 
And  what  the  honest  saw  was  not  beautiful  as  Tenny 
son  knew  beauty,  not  grand,  not  even  very  pleasant.  It 
is  their  job  to  make  beauty  out  of  it,  beauty  of  a  new 
kind  probably,  because  it  will  accompany  new  truth; 
but  they  must  have  time.  Surprise,  shock,  experiment, 
come  first.  The  new  literature  deserves  criticism, 
but  it  also  deserves  respect.  Contempt  for  it  is  mis 
placed,  aversion  is  dangerous  since  it  leads  to  ignorance, 
wholesale  condemnation  such  as  one  hears  from  pro 
fessional  platforms  and  reads  in  newspaper  editorials 
is  as  futile  as  the  undiscriminating  praise  of  those 
who  welcome  novelty  just  because  it  is  new. 


Barbarians  a  la  Mode 

THE  liberal  mind,  which  just  now  is  out  of  a  job  in 
politics,  might  very  well  have  a  look  at  the  present  state 
of  literature.  A  task  is  there  ready  for  it. 

Our  literature  is  being  stretched  and  twisted  or 
hacked  and  hewed  by  dogmatists.  Most  of  the  critics 
are  too  busy  gossiping  about  plots  and  the  private  lives 
of  authors  to  devote  much  attention  to  principles.  But 
the  noble  few  who  still  can  write  about  a  book  without 
falling  into  it,  or  criticize  an  author's  style  without 
dragging  in  his  taste  in  summer  resorts,  are  chiefly  con 
cerned  with  classifications.  Is  our  author  conservative 
or  radical?  Are  his  novels  long  or  short  skirted?  Does 
he  write  for  Harper's  or  The  Dial?  They  have  divided 
America  chronologically  into  the  old  and  the  new  and 
geographically  into  East  or  West  of  the  Alleghanies, 
or  North  or  South  of  Fourteenth  Street  in  New  York. 
Such  creative  writers  as  have  a  definite  philosophy  of 
composition  are  equally  categorical.  And  both  are 
calling  upon  liberal  minds,  who  are  supposed  to  have 
no  principles  of  their  own,  to  umpire  the  controversy. 

The  liberal  mind,  which  I  believe  in,  though  I  hesi 
tate  to  define  it,  has  too  much  work  before  it  to  umpire 
in  a  dispute  over  the  relative  taste  of  the  decayed  and 
the  raw.  In  literature,  as  in  pretty  much  everything 
else,  the  central  problem  is  not  the  struggle  of  the  old 

174 


Barbarians  a  la  Mode  175 

with  the  new;  it  is  the  endless  combat  of  civilization 
(which  is  old  and  new)  against  barbarism.  Under 
which  banner  our  writers  are  enlisting  is  the  vital  ques 
tion.  Whether  they  are  radical  or  conservative  will 
always  in  the  view  of  history  be  interesting,  but  may  be 
substantially  unimportant.  And  the  function  of  the 
liberal  mind,  with  its  known  power  to  dissolve  illiberal 
dogmatism,  is  to  discover  the  barbarian  wherever  he 
raises  his  head,  and  to  convert  or  destroy  him. 

The  Greeks  had  a  short  way  of  defining  the  barbarian 
which  we  can  only  envy.  To  them,  all  men  not  Greeks 
were  barbarians.  By  this  they  meant  that  only  the 
Greeks  had  learned  to  desire  measure  in  all  things,  lib 
erty  safeguarded  by  law,  and  knowledge  of  the  truth 
about  life.  Men  not  desiring  these  things  were  bar 
barous,  no  matter  how  noble,  how  rich,  and  how  honest. 
The  ancient  and  highly  conservative  Egyptians  were 
barbarous;  the  youthful  and  new-fangled  Gauls  were 
barbarous.  An  Egyptian  in  nothing  else  resembled  a 
Gaul,  but  both  in  the  eyes  of  the  Greek  were  barbarians. 

Evolution  and  devolution  have  intervened.  The 
Gaul  has  become  one  of  the  standards  of  civilization; 
the  Egyptian  has  died  of  his  conservatism;  but  the 
problem  of  the  barbarian  remains  the  same.  There 
are  neo-Gauls  to-day  and  neo-Egyptians. 

These  gentry  do  not  belong  to  the  welter  of  vulgar 
barbarism,  the  curse  of  a  half  educated,  half  democra 
tized  age.  They  are  found  among  the  upper  classes 
of  the  intellect,  and  can  rightly  be  called  by  such 
names  as  conservative  or  radical,  which  show  that  they 


176  The  New  Generation 

are  part  of  the  minority  that  thinks.  Indeed,  they  are 
not  barbarous  at  all  in  the  harsh  modern  sense  of  the 
word;  yet  the  Greeks  would  have  condemned  them. 

The  barbarism  of  the  neo-Gaul  is  unrestraint 
("punch"  is  the  nearest  modern  equivalent).  The  neo- 
Gaul  is  an  innovator  and  this  is  his  vice.  It  is  a  by 
product  of  originality  and  a  symptom  of  a  restless 
desire  for  change.  The  realist  who  makes  a  poem, 
not  on  his  lady's  eyebrows  but  her  intestines,  is  a 
good  current  example.  The  novelist  who  shovels  un 
distinguished  humanity,  just  because  it  is  human,  into 
his  book  is  another.  The  versifier  who  twists  and 
breaks  his  rhythm  solely  in  order  to  get  new  sounds  is 
a  third.  A  fourth  is  the  stylist  who  writes  in  disjointed 
phrases  and  expletives,  intended  to  represent  the  actual 
processes  of  the  mind. 

The  realist  poet,  so  the  Greeks  would  have  said, 
lacks  measure.  He  destroys  the  balance  of  his  art 
by  asking  your  attention  for  the  strangeness  of  his 
subject.  It  is  as  if  a  sculptor  should  make  a  Venus 
of  chewing  gum.  The  novelist  lacks  self-restraint. 
Life  interests  him  so  much  that  he  devours  without 
digesting  it.  The  result  is  like  a  moving  picture  run 
too  fast.  The  versifier  also  lacks  measure.  He  is  more 
anxious  to  be  new  than  to  be  true,  and  he  seeks  effects 
upon  the  reader  rather  than  forms  for  his  thought. 
The  bizarre  stylist  misses  truth  by  straining  too  much 
to  achieve  it.  Words  are  only  symbols.  They  never 
more  than  roughly  represent  a  picture  of  thought.  A 
monologue  like  this,  as  the  heroine  goes  to  shop: 


Barbarians  a  la  Mode  177 

Chapel  Street  ...  the  old  hardware  shop  .  .  .  scissors, 
skates  glittering,  moonlight  on  the  ice  ...  old  Dr.  Brown's 
head,  like  a  rink.  Rink  ...  a  queer  word!  Pigeons  in  the 
air  above  the  housetops — automobiles  like  elephants.  Was 
her  nose  properly  powdered?  .  .  .  Had  she  cared  to  dance 
with  him  after  all? 

is  not  absolutely  true:  it  is  not  the  wordless  images 
that  float  through  the  idle  mind,  but  only  a  symbol 
of  them,  more  awkward  and  less  informative  than  the 
plain  English  of  what  the  heroine  felt  and  thought. 

All  these  instances  are  barbarous  in  the  Greek  sense, 
and  their  perpetrators,  no  matter  how  cultivated,  how 
well-meaning,  how  useful  sometimes  as  pioneers  and 
pathbreakers,  are  barbarians.  Some  of  them  should 
be  exposed;  some  chided;  some  labored  with,  accord 
ing  to  the  magnitude  and  the  nature  of  their  offense. 
The  critics  who  uphold  and  approve  them  should  be 
dealt  with  likewise.  And  it  is  the  reader  with  the 
liberal  mind  who  is  called  to  the  task.  He  is  in  sym 
pathy,  at  least,  with  change,  and  knows  that  the 
history  of  civilization  has  been  a  struggle  to  break 
away  from  tradition  and  yet  not  go  empty-handed; 
he  can  understand  the  passion  to  express  old  things 
in  a  new  and  better  way,  or  he  is  not  intellectually 
liberal.  It  takes  a  liberal  mind  to  distinguish  between 
barbarism  and  progress. 

Next  there  is  the  rigor  mortis  of  the  neo-Egyptians, 
the  barbarism  of  the  dead  hand,  called  by  the  unkind 
and  the  undiscriminating,  academic  barbarism. 

Let  us  humor  the  Menckenites  by  so  calling  it,  and 


178  The  New  Generation 

then  add  that  it  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the  colleges, 
although  it  is  a  vice  more  familiar  in  critics  than  in 
creative  artists.  A  Ph.D.  is  quite  unnecessary  in  order 
to  be  academic  in  this  sense,  just  as  one  does  not  have 
to  be  a  scholar  in  order  to  be  pedantical.  To  stand 
pat  in  one's  thinking  (and  this  is  the  neo-Egyptian 
fault)  is  to  be  barbarous,  whatever  the  profession  of 
the  thinker.  True,  the  victims  of  this  hardening  of 
the  brain  are  precisely  those  men  and  women  most 
likely  to  fling  taunts  at  the  moderns,  just  those  who 
would  rather  be  charged  with  immorality  than  bar 
barism.  And  yet,  to  be  bound  to  the  past  is  as  bar 
barous  in  the  Greek  sense  as  to  be  wholly  immersed 
in  the  present.  The  Egyptians  for  all  their  learning 
were  barbarians. 

Barbarian  is  not  as  rude  a  word  as  it  sounds.  Most 
of  the  great  romanticists  had  strains  of  the  barbarous 
in  them — the  young  Shakespeare  among  them.  Indeed, 
much  may  be  said  for  sound  barbarian  literature,  until 
it  becomes  self-conscious,  though  not  much  for  bar 
barian  criticism.  Nevertheless,  I  do  not  intend  in  this 
sally  against  the  slavish  barbarism  of  the  merely  aca 
demic  mind  to  hurl  the  epithet  recklessly.  Lusty  con 
servatives  who  attack  free  verse,  free  fiction,  ultra 
realism,  "jazzed"  prose,  and  the  socialistic  drama  as 
the  diseases  of  the  period  have  my  respect  and  sym 
pathy,  when  it  is  a  disease  and  not  change  as  change 
that  they  are  attacking.  And,  often  enough,  these 
manifestations  are  symptoms  of  disease,  a  plethoric 
disease  arising  from  too  high  blood  pressure.  Hard- 


Barbarians  a  la  Mode  179 

hitting  conservatives  were  never  more  needed  in  litera 
ture  than  now,  when  any  one  can  print  anything  that 
is  novel,  and  find  some  one  to  approve  of  it.  But  there 
are  too  many  respectable  barbarians  among  our  Ameri 
can  conservatives  who  write  just  what  they  wrote 
twenty  years  ago,  and  like  just  what  they  liked  twenty 
years  ago,  because  that  is  their  nature.  In  1600  they 
would  have  done  the  same  for  1579.  Without  question 
men  were  regretting  in  1600  the  genius  of  the  youthful 
Shakespeare  of  the  '8o's,  later  quenched  by  commer 
cialism  (see  the  appeals  to  the  pit  and  the  topical 
references  in  "Hamlet");  and  good  conservatives  were 
certainly  regretting  the  sad  course  of  the  drama  which, 
torn  from  the  scholars  and  flung  to  the  mob,  had  be 
come  mad  clowning.  What  we  need  in  the  Tory  line 
is  not  such  ice-bound  derelicts  but  men  who  are  pas 
sionate  about  the  past  because  they  find  their  inspira 
tion  there,  men  and  women  who  belabor  the  present 
not  for  its  existence,  but  because  it  might  have  been 
better  if  it  had  been  wiser. 

They  must,  in  short,  be  Greeks,  not  barbarians.  It 
is  the  reverse  of  barbarous  to  defend  the  old,  but  the 
man  who  can  see  no  need,  no  good,  no  hope  in  change 
is  a  barbarian.  He  flinches  from  the  truth  physical 
and  the  truth  spiritual  that  life  is  motion.  I  particu 
larly  refer  to  the  literary  person  who  sneers  at  novels 
because  they  are  not  epics,  and  condemns  new  poems 
or  plays  unread  if  they  deal  with  a  phase  of  human 
evolution  that  does  not  please  him.  I  mean  the  critic 
who  drags  his  victim  back  to  Aristotle  or  Matthew 


180  The  New  Generation 

Arnold  and  slays  him  on  a  text  whose  application 
Aristotle  or  Arnold  would  have  been  the  first  to  deny. 
I  mean  the  teacher  who  by  ironic  thrust  and  visible 
contempt  destroys  the  faith  of  youth  in  the  literary 
present  without  imparting  more  than  a  pallid  interest 
in  the  past.  I  mean  the  essayist  who  in  1911  described 
Masefield  as  an  unsound  and  dangerous  radical  in 
verse,  and  in  1921  accepts  him  as  the  standard  "mod 
ern"  poet  by  whom  his  degenerate  successors  are  to 
be  measured. 

All  this  is  barbarism  because  it  is  ignorance  or  denial 
of  the  laws  of  growth.  It  belongs  anthropologically 
with  totemism,  sacerdotalism,  neo-ritualism,  and  every 
other  remnant  of  the  terrible  shackles  of  use  and  wont 
which  chained  early  man  to  his  past.  It  is  Egyptian. 
Its  high  priests  are  sometimes  learned  but  their  minds 
are  frozen.  Beware  of  them. 

In  England,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  this  variety 
of  barbarism  shows  itself  usually  in  a  rather  snobbish 
intolerance  of  anything  not  good  form  in  literature. 
The  universities  still  protect  it,  but  its  home  is  in 
London,  among  the  professional  middle  class. 

In  America  its  symptom  is  well-disguised  fear. 
Some  of  us  are  afraid  of  our  literary  future  just  as 
many  of  us  are  afraid  of  democracy.  Poetry  and  criti 
cism  (we  feel)  which  used  to  be  written  by  classicists 
and  gentlemen  are  now  in  the  hands  of  the  corn-fed 
multitude,  educated  God  knows  how  or  where.  Fic 
tion,  once  a  profession,  has  become  a  trade,  and  so 
has  the  drama.  The  line  between  journalism  and  litera- 


Barbarians  a  la  Mode  181 

ture  is  lost.  Grub  Street  has  become  an  emporium. 
Any  one,  anything  can  get  into  a  story  or  a  son 
net.  .  .  . 

The  Greek  of  to-day  (as  we  venture  to  define  him) 
views  all  this  with  some  regret,  and  more  concern. 
He  sees  that  fine  traditions  are  withering,  that  fine 
things  are  being  marred  by  ignorant  handling.  He 
fears  debasement,  he  hates  vulgarity,  and  his  realist 
soul  admits  the  high  probability  of  both  in  a  society 
whose  standards  are  broader  than  they  are  high.  But 
he  also  sees  new  energies  let  loose  and  new  resources 
discovered;  he  recognizes  new  forms  of  expression, 
uncouth  or  colloquial  perhaps,  but  capable  of  vitality 
and  truth,  and  not  without  beauty.  He  bends  his  mind 
toward  them,  knowing  that  if  he  ignores  them  their 
authors  will  ignore  him  and  his  kind. 

The  Egyptian  is  afraid.  He  pulls  his  mantle  closer 
about  him  and  walks  by  on  the  other  side. 

Here  again  is  work  for  the  liberal  mind.  If  it  is 
really  liberal — which  means  that  training  and  disposi 
tion  have  made  it  free  to  move  through  both  the  past 
and  the  present — it  can  cope  with  this  Egyptian  bar 
barism;  for  liberal-minded  lovers  of  literature,  by  per 
forming  a  very  simple  operation  in  psychoanalysis,  can 
understand  how  love  for  the  good  old  times  may  cause 
fear  lest  we  lose  their  fruits,  and  how  fear  blinds  the 
critic's  eye,  makes  his  tongue  harsh,  and  his  judgment 
rigid  as  death. 

Liberalism  in  politics  is  sulking  just  now,  like  Achilles 
in  his  tent,  its  aid  having  been  invited  too  early,  or 


182  The  New,  Generation 

too  late.  But  the  liberal  spirit  can  never  rest,  and 
we  solicit  its  help  in  literature.  I  have  mentioned  the 
Gauls  and  the  Egyptians  as  the  enemies  within  the 
camp  of  the  intellectual,  but  beyond  them  lie  the  un 
counted  numbers  of  the  outer  barbarians,  the  mass 
of  the  unillumined,  to  whom  neither  tradition  nor  re 
volt,  nor  anything  which  moves  and  has  its  being  in 
the  intellect  has  any  significance.  Here  is  the  common 
enemy  of  all,  who  can  be  conquered  only  by  convert 
ing  him.  When  the  Gaul  and  the  Egyptian  are  liber 
alized,  the  real  job  begins. 

"If  we  compose  well  here,  to  Parthia." 


IV 

The  Reviewing  of  Books 


A  Prospectus  for  Criticism 

CRITICISM,  in  one  respect,  is  like  science:  there  is 
pure  science,  so-called,  and  applied  science;  there  is 
pure  criticism  and  applied  criticism,  which  latter  is 
reviewing.  In  applied  science,  principles  established 
elsewhere  are  put  to  work;  in  reviewing,  critical  prin 
ciples  are,  or  should  be,  put  to  work  in  the  analysis 
of  books,  but  the  books,  if  they  are  really  important, 
often  make  it  necessary  to  erect  new  critical  principles. 
In  fact,  it  is  impossible  to  set  a  line  where  criticism 
ceases  and  reviewing  begins.  Good  criticism  is  gener 
ally  applicable  to  all  literature;  good  reviewing  is  good 
criticism  applied  to  a  new  book.  I  see  no  other  valid 
distinction. 

Reviewing  in  America  has  had  a  career  by  no  means 
glorious.  In  the  early  nineteenth  century,  at  the  time 
of  our  first  considerable  productivity  in  literature,  it 
was  sporadic.  The  great  guns — Lowell,  Emerson- 
fired  critical  broadsides  into  the  past;  only  occasionally 
(as  in  "A  Fable  for  Critics")  were  they  drawn  into 
discussions  of  their  contemporaries,  and  then,  as  in  the 
Emerson-Whitman  affair,  they  sometimes  regretted  it. 
Reviewing  was  carried  on  in  small  type,  in  the  backs 
of  certain  magazines.  Most  of  it  was  verbose  and  much 
of  it  was  worthless  as  criticism.  The  belated  recogni 
tion  of  the  critical  genius  of  Poe  was  due  to  the  com- 

185 


1 86  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

pany  he  kept.  He  was  a  sadly  erratic  reviewer,  as 
often  wrong,  I  suppose,  as  right,  but  the  most  durable 
literary  criticism  of  the  age  came  from  his  pen,  and 
is  to  be  found  in  a  review,  a  review  of  Hawthorne's 
short  stories. 

After  the  Civil  War  the  situation  did  not  imme 
diately  improve.  We  had  perhaps  better  reviewing, 
certainly  much  better  mediums  of  criticism,  such,  for 
example,  as  The  Nation,  and,  later,  The  Critic,  but 
not  more  really  excellent  criticism.  The  magazines 
and  newspapers  improved,  the  weekly,  as  a  medium 
of  reviewing,  established  itself,  though  it  functioned 
imperfectly;  the  individuals  of  force  and  insight  who 
broke  through  current  comment  into  criticism  were 
more  plentiful,  but  not  more  eminent. 

The  new  era  in  reviewing,  our  era,  began  with  two 
phenomena,  of  which  the  first  had  obscure  beginnings 
and  the  second  can  be  exactly  dated. 

The  first  was  modern  journalism.  Just  when  journal 
ism  became  personal,  racy,  and  inclusive  of  all  the 
interests  of  modern  life,  I  cannot  say.  Kipling  exhibits 
its  early  effects  upon  literature,  but  Kipling  was  an 
effect,  not  a  cause.  No  matter  when  it  began,  we  have 
seen,  in  the  decade  or  two  behind  us,  reviewing  made 
journalistic,  an  item  of  news,  but  still  more  a  means 
of  entertainment. 

The  journalistic  reviewer,  who  is  still  the  commonest 
variety,  had  one  great  merit.  He  was  usually  interest 
ing.  Naturally  so,  since  he  wrote  not  to  criticize  the 


A  Prospectus  for  Criticism  187 

book  that  had  been  given  him,  but  to  interest  his 
readers.  Yet  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case  he  labored 
under  a  disadvantage  which  forever  barred  him  from 
calling  himself  critic  as  well  as  reviewer.  He*  was  a 
specialist  in  reporting,  in  making  a  story  from  the 
most  unpromising  material,  and  also  in  the  use  of  his 
mother  tongue,  but  a  specialist,  usually,  in  no  other 
field  whatsoever.  Fiction,  poetry,  biography,  science, 
history,  politics,  theology — whatever  came  to  his  mill 
was  grist  for  the  paper,  and  the  less  he  knew  of  the 
subject  and  the  less  he  had  read  and  thought,  the  more 
emphatic,  were  his  opinions. 

The  club  and  saber  work  of  Pope's  day  and  Chris 
topher  North's  has  gone — advertising  has  made  it  an 
expensive  luxury,  and  here  at  least  commercialism  has 
been  of  service  to  literature.  It  was  wholesale  and 
emphatic  praise  that  became  a  trademark  of  journal 
istic  reviewing.  First  novels,  or  obscure  novels,  were 
sometimes  handled  roughly  by  a  reviewer  whose  duty 
was  to  prepare  a.  smart  piece  of  copy.  But  when  books 
by  the  well  known  came  to  his  desk  it  was  safer  to 
praise  than  to  damn,  because  in  damning  one  had  to 
give  reasons,  whereas  indiscriminate  praise  needed 
neither  knowledge  nor  excuse.  Furthermore,  since  the 
chief  object  was  to  have  one's  review  read,  excessive 
praise  had  every  advantage  over  measured  approval. 
Who  would  hesitate  between  two  articles,  one  headed 
"The  Best  Book  of  the  Year,"  and  the  other,  "A  New 
Novel  Critically  Considered"! 

Thus,  journalism  per  se  has  done  little  for  the  cause 


1 88  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

of  American  reviewing,  and  directly  or  indirectly  it 
has  done  much  harm,  if  only  by  encouraging  publishers 
who  found  no  competent  discussions  of  their  wares  to 
set  up  their  own  critics,  who  poured  out  through  the 
columns  of  an  easy  press  commendations  of  the  new 
books  which  were  often  most  intelligent,  but  never 
unbiased. 

The  newspapers,  however,  have  rendered  one  great 
service  to  criticism.  In  spite  of  their  attempts  to  make 
even  the  most  serious  books  newsy  news,  they,  and 
they  alone,  have  kept  pace  with  the  growing  swarm  of 
published  books.  The  literary  supplement,  which  pro 
posed  to  review  all  books  not  strictly  technical  or  tran 
sient,  was  a  newspaper  creation.  And  the  literary  sup 
plement,  which  grew  from  the  old  book  page,  contained 
much  reviewing  which  was  in  no  bad  sense  journalistic. 
Without  it  the  public  would  have  had  only  the  adver 
tisements  and  the  publishers7  announcements  to  classify, 
analyze,  and  in  some  measure  describe  the  regiment 
of  books  that  marches  in  advance  of  our  civilization. 

We  were  not  to  be  dependent,  however,  upon  the 
budding  supplements  and  the  clever,  ignorant  review 
ing,  which,  in  spite  of  notable  exceptions,  characterized 
the  newspaper  view  of  books.  The  technical  critic 
of  technical  books  had  long  been  practising,  and  his 
ability  increased  with  the  advance  in  scholarship  that 
marked  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  prob 
lem  was  how  to  make  him  write  for  the  general  in 
telligent  reader.  For  years  the  old  Nation,  under  the 
editorship  of  Garrison  and  of  Godkin,  carried  on  this 


A  Prospectus  for  Criticism  189 

struggle  almost  single-handed.  For  a  generation  it  was 
the  only  American  source  from  which  an  author  might 
expect  a  competent  review  of  a  serious,  non-technical 
book.  But  the  weight  of  the  endeavor  was  too  much 
for  it.  Fiction  it  largely  evaded,  as  the  London  Times 
Literary  Supplement  does  to-day.  And  with  all  the 
serious  books  in  English  awaiting  attention  in  a  few 
pages  of  a  single  weekly,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the 
shelves  of  its  editorial  office  held  one  of  the  best  modern 
libraries  in  New  York!  Or  that  Christmas,  1887,  was 
the  time  chosen  to  review  a  gift  edition  of  1886!  The 
old  Dial  had  a  like  struggle,  and  a  resembling  diffi 
culty. 

It  was  in  1914  that  The  New  Republic  applied  a 
new  solution  to  the  problem,  and  from  its  pages  and 
from  the  other  "intellectual  weeklies"  which  have 
joined  it,  has  come  not  merely  some  of  the  best  review 
ing  that  we  have  had,  but  also  a  distinct  lift  upwards 
in  the  standard  of  our  discussion  of  contemporary 
books  of  general  interest.  After  1914  one  could  ex 
pect  to  find  American  reviews  of  certain  kinds  of 
books  which  were  as  excellent  as  any  criticisms  from 
England  or  from  France. 

But  the  solution  applied  was  of  such  a  character  as 
to  limit  definitely  its  application.  The  New  Republic, 
the  present  Nation,  The  Freeman,  The  Weekly  Review, 
and,  in  a  little  different  sense,  The  Dial,  were  founded 
by  groups  held  together,  with  the  exception  of  The 
Dial  coterie,  not  by  any  common  attitude  towards  lit 
erature,  or  by  any  specific  interest  in  literature  itself, 


190  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

but  rather  by  a  common  social  philosophy.  These 
journals,  again  with  the  one  exception,  were  devoted 
primarily  to  the  application  of  their  respective  social 
philosophies.  Even  when  in  reviews  or  articles  there 
was  no  direct  social  application,  there  was  a  clear  irradi 
ation  from  within.  When  The  New  Republic  is  hu 
morous,  it  is  a  social-liberal  humor.  When  The  Free 
man  is  ironic  there  is  usually  an  indirect  reference  to 
the  Single  Tax.  And  The  Dial  will  be  modern  or 
perish. 

As  a  result  of  all  this  the  space  given  to  books 
at  large  in  the  social-political  journals  was  small.  And 
in  that  space  one  could  prophesy  with  some  exactness 
the  reviewing  to  be  expected.  Books  of  social  philos 
ophy,  novels  with  a  thesis,  poetry  of  radical  emotion, 
documented  history,  and  the  criticism  of  politics  or 
economic  theory  have  had  such  expert  reviewing  as 
America  has  never  before  provided  in  such  quantity. 
But  there  was  a  certain  monotony  in  the  conclusions 
reached.  "Advanced"  books  had  "advanced"  reviewers 
who  approved  of  the  author's  ideas  even  if  they  did 
not  like  his  book.  Conservative  books  were  sure  to 
be  attacked  in  one  paragraph  even  if  they  were  praised 
in  another.  What  was  much  more  deplorable,  good, 
old-fashioned  books,  that  were  neither  conservative 
nor  radical,  but  just  human,  had  an  excellent  chance 
of  interesting  no  one  of  these  philosophical  editors  and 
so  of  never  being  reviewed  at  all.  Irving,  Cooper  of 
the  Leatherstocking  Series,  possibly  Hawthorne,  and 
quite  certainly  the  author  of  "Huckleberry  Finn" 


A  Prospectus  for  Criticism  191 

would  have  turned  over  pages  for  many  a  day  without 
seeing  their  names  at  all. 

Thus  the  intellectual  weekly  gave  us  an  upstand 
ing,  competent  criticism  of  books  with  ideas  in  them — 
when  the  ideas  seemed  important  to  the  editors;  a 
useful  service,  but  not  a  comprehensive  one;  the  criti 
cism  of  a  trend  rather  than  a  literature;  of  the  products 
of  a  social  group  rather  than  the  outspeaking  of  a 
nation.  Something  more  was  needed. 

Something  more  was  needed;  and  specifically  liter 
ary  mediums  that  should  be  catholic  in  criticism,  com 
prehensive  in  scope,  sound,  stimulating,  and  accurate. 

To  be  catholic  in  criticism  does  not  mean  to  be  weak 
and  opinionless.  A  determination  to  discuss  literature 
honestly  and  with  insight,  letting  conclusions  be  what 
they  must,  may  be  regarded  as  a  sufficient  editorial 
stock  in  trade.  It  is  fundamental,  but  it  is  not  suffi 
cient.  Just  as  there  is  personality  behind  every  gov 
ernment,  so  there  should  be  a  definite  set  of  personal 
convictions  behind  literary  criticism,  which  is  not  a 
science,  though  science  may  aid  it.  Sterilized,  dehu 
manized  criticism  is  almost  a  contradiction  in  terms, 
except  in  those  rare  cases  where  the  weighing  of  evi 
dential  facts  is  all  that  is  required.  But  these  cases 
are  most  rare.  Even  a  study  of  the  text  of  Beowulf, 
or  a  history  of  Norman  law,  will  be  influenced  by 
the  personal  emotions  of  the  investigator,  and  must  be 
so  criticized.  Men  choose  their  philosophy  according 
to  their  temperament;  so  do  writers  write;  and  so  must 
critics  criticize.  Which  is  by  no  means  to  say  that 


192  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

criticism  is  merely  an  affair  of  temperament,  but  rather 
to  assert  that  temperament  must  not  be  left  out  of 
account  in  conducting  or  interpreting  criticism. 

Ideally,  then,  the  editors  of  a  catholic  review  should 
have  definite  convictions,  if  flexible  minds,  established 
principles,  if  a  wide  latitude  of  application.  But  al 
though  a  review  may  thus  be  made  catholic,  it  cannot 
thus  attain  comprehensiveness.  There  are  too  many 
books;  too  many  branches  upon  the  luxuriant  tree  of 
modern  knowledge.  No  editorial  group,  no  editorial 
staff,  can  survey  the  field  competently  unless  they 
strictly  delimit  it  by  selection,  and  that  means  not  to 
be  comprehensive.  Yet  if  the  experts  are  to  be  called 
in,  the  good  critics,  the  good  scholars,  the  good  sci 
entists,  until  every  book  is  reviewed  by  the  writer 
best  qualified  to  review  it,  then  we  must  hope  to  attain 
truth  by  averages  as  the  scientists  do,  rather  than  by 
dogmatic  edict.  For  if  it  is  difficult  to  guarantee  in 
a  few  that  sympathy  with  all  earnest  books  which  does 
not  preclude  rigid  honesty  in  the  application  of  firmly 
held  principles,  it  is  more  difficult  w'ith  the  many.  And 
if  it  is  hard  to  exclude  bias,  inaccuracy,  over-statement, 
and  inadequacy  from  the  work  even  of  a  small  and 
chosen  group,  it  is  still  harder  to  be  certain  of  complete 
competence  if  the  net  is  thrown  more  widely. 

In  fact,  there  is  no  absolute  insurance  against  bad 
criticism  except  the  intelligence  of  the  reader.  He  must 
discount  where  discount  is  necessary,  he  must  weigh  the 
authority  of  the  reviewer,  he  must  listen  to  the  critic 


A  Prospectus  for  Criticism  193 

as  the  protestant  to  his  minister,  willing  to  be  in 
structed,  but  aware  of  the  fallibility  of  man. 

Hence,  a  journal  of  comprehensive  criticism  must 
first  select  its  reviewers  with  the  greatest  care  and 
then  print  vouchers  for  their  opinions,  which  will  be 
the  names  of  the  reviewers.  Hence  it  must  open  its 
columns  to  rebuttals  or  qualifications,  so  that  the 
reader  may  form  his  own  conclusions  as  to  the  validity 
of  the  criticism,  and,  after  he  has  read  the  book,  judge 
its  critics. 

All  this  is  a  world  away  from  the  anonymous,  dog 
matic  reviewing  of  a  century  ago.  But  who  shall  say 
that  in  this  respect  our  practice  is  retrograde? 

It  is  a  great  and  sprawling  country,  this  America, 
with  all  manner  of  men  of  all  manners  in  it,  and  the 
days  of  patent  medicines  have  passed,  when  one  bottle 
was  supposed  to  contain  a  universal  cure.  But  in  this 
matter  of  reading,  which  must  be  the  chief  concern 
of  those  who  support  a  critical  journal,  there  is  one 
disease  common  to  most  of  us  that  can  be  diagnosed 
with  certainty,  and  one  sure,  though  slow-working,  rem 
edy,  that  can  be  applied.  We  are  uncritical  readers. 
We  like  too  readily,  which  is  an  amiable  fault;  we 
dislike  too  readily,  which  is  a  misfortune.  We  accept 
the  cheap  when  we  might  have  the  costly  book.  We 
dislike  the  new,  the  true,  the  accurate,  and  the  beauti 
ful,  because  we  will  not  seek,  or  cannot  grasp,  them. 
We  are  afflicted  with  that  complex  of  democracy — a 
distrust  of  the  best.  Nine  out  of  ten  magazines,  nine 


194  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

out  of  ten  libraries,  nine  out  of  ten  intelligent  American 
minds  prove  this  accusation. 

And  the  cure  is  more  civilization,  more  intellectuality, 
a  finer  and  stronger  emotion?  One  might  as  well  say 
that  the  cure  for  being  sick  is  to  get  well!  This,  in 
deed,  is  the  cure;  but  the  remedy  is  a  vigorous  criti 
cism.  Call  in  the  experts,  let  them  name  themselves 
and  their  qualifications  like  ancient  champions,  and 
then  proceed  to  lay  about  with  a  will.  Sometimes  the 
maiden  literature,  queen  of  the  tournament,  will  be 
slain  instead  of  the  Knight  of  Error,  and  often  the 
spectators  will  be  scratched  by  the  whir  of  a  sword. 
Nevertheless,  the  fight  is  in  the  open,  we  know  the 
adversaries,  and  the  final  judgment,  whether  to  salute 
a  victor  or  condemn  an  impostor,  is  ours. 

Thus,  figuratively,  one  might  describe  the  proper 
function  in  criticism  of  a  liberal  journal  of  catholic 
criticism  to-day.  One  thing  I  have  omitted,  that  its 
duty  is  not  limited  to  criticism,  for  if  it  is  to  be  com 
prehensive,  it  must  present  also  vast  quantities  of  ac 
curate  and  indispensable  facts,  the  news  of  literature. 
And  one  prerequisite  I  have  felt  it  unnecessary  to 
dwell  upon.  Unless  its  intent  is  honest,  and  its  editors 
independent  of  influence  from  any  self-interested 
source,  the  literary  tournament  of  criticism  becomes 
either  a  parade  of  the  virtues  with  banners  for  the 
favorites,  or  a  melee  where  rivals  seek  revenge.  Venal 
criticism  is  the  drug  and  dishonest  criticism  the  poison 
of  literature. 


The  Race  of  Reviewers 

As  a  reviewer  of  books,  my  experience  has  been  lengthy 
rather  than  considerable.  It  is,  indeed,  precisely 
twenty- two  years  since  I  w  ote  my  first  review,  which 
ended,  naturally,  with  the  v/ords  "a  good  book  to  read 
of  a  winter  evening  before  a  roaring  fire."  I  remem 
ber  -them  because  the  publishers,  who  are  lovers  of 
platitudes,  quoted  them,  to  my  deep  gratification,  and 
perhaps  because  I  had  seen  them  before.  Since  then 
I  have  reviewed  at  least  twice  as  many  books  as  there 
are  years  in  this  record — about  as  many,  I  suppose, 
as  a  book-page  war-horse  in  racing  trim  could  do  in  a 
month,  or  a  week.  My  credentials  are  not  impressive 
in  this  category,  but  perhaps  they  will  suffice. 

As  an  author,  my  claim  to  enter  upon  this  self-con 
tained  symposium  which  I  am  about  to  present  is  some 
what  stronger.  Authors,  of  course,  read  all  the  re 
views  of  their  books,  even  that  common  American  vari 
ety  which  runs  like  the  telegraphic  alphabet:  quote — 
summarize — quote — quote — summarize — quote,  and  so 
on  up  to  five  dollars'  worth,  space  rates.  I  have  read 
all  the  reviews  of  my  books  except  those  which  clipping 
bureaus  seeking  a  subscription  or  kind  friends  wishing 
to  chastise  vicariously  have  neglected  to  send  me.  As 
an  author  I  can  speak  with  mingled  feelings,  but  widely, 
of  reviews. 

195 


196  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

Editorially  my  experience  has  been  equally  poignant. 
For  ten  years  I  have  read  reviews,  revised  and  unre- 
vised,  in  proof  and  out  of  it.  I  have  cut  reviews  that 
needed  cutting  and  meekly  endured  the  curses  of  the 
reviewer.  I  have  printed  conscientiously  reviews  that 
had  better  been  left  unwritten,  and  held  my  head  bloody 
but  unbowed  up  to  the  buffets  of  the  infuriated  authors. 
As  an  editor  I  may  say  that  I  am  at  home,  though 
not  always  happy,  with  reviewing  and  reviewers. 

And  now,  when  in  one  of  those  rare  moments  of 
meditation  which  even  New  York  permits  I  ask  myself 
why  does  every  man  or  woman  with  the  least  stir  of 
literature  in  them  wish  to  review  books,  my  trinitarian 
self — critic,  author,  editor — holds  high  debate.  For  a 
long  time  I  have  desired  to  fight  it  out,  and  find,  if 
it  can  be  found,  the  answer. 

As  an  author,  I  have  a  strong  distaste  for  reviewing. 
In  the  creative  mood  of  composition,  or  in  weary  relax 
ation,  reviewing  seems  the  most  ungrateful  of  tasks. 
Nothing  comes  whole  to  a  reviewer.  Half  of  every 
book  must  elude  him,  and  the  other  half  he  must 
compress  into  snappy  phrases.  I  watch  him  working 
upon  that  corpus,  which  so  lately  was  a  thing  of  life 
and  movement — my  book — and  see  that  he  cannot  lift 
it;  that  he  must  have  some  hand-hold  to  grip  it  by — 
my  style  or  my  supposed  interest  in  the  Socialist  Party, 
or  the  fact  that  I  am  a  professor  or  a  Roman  Catholic. 
Unless  he  can  get  some  phrase  that  will  explain  the 
characters  of  my  women,  the  length  of  my  sentences, 
and  the  moral  I  so  carefully  hid  in  the  last  chapter, 


The  Race  of  Reviewers  197 

he  is  helpless.  Sometimes  I  find  him  running  for  a 
column  without  finding  a  gate  to  my  mind,  and  then 
giving  it  up  in  mid-paragraph.  Sometimes  he  gets 
inside,  but  dashes  for  the  exit  sign  and  is  out  before 
I  know  what  he  thinks.  Sometimes  he  finds  an  idea 
to  his  liking,  wraps  up  in  it,  and  goes  to  sleep. 

I  recognize  his  usefulness.  I  take  his  hard  raps 
meekly  and  even  remember  them  when  next  I  begin 
to  write.  I  do  not  hate  him  much  when  he  tells 
the  public  not  to  read  me.  There  is  always  the  chance 
that  he  is  right  for  his  public;  not,  thank  heavens,  for 
mine.  I  am  furious  only  when  it  is  clear  that  he  has 
not  read  me  himself.  But  I  cannot  envy  him.  It  is  so 
much  more  agreeable  to  make  points  than  to  find  them. 
It  is  so  much  easier,  if  you  have  a  little  talent,  to 
build  some  kind  of  an  engine  that  will  run  than  to 
explain  what  precise  fault  prevents  it  from  being  the 
best.  When  I  am  writing  a  book  I  cannot  understand 
the  mania  for  criticism  that  seems  to  infect  the  major 
ity  of  the  literary  kind. 

As  a  reviewer  I  must  again  confess,  although  as  an 
editor  I  may  bitterly  regret  the  confession,  that  the 
passion  for  reviewing  is  almost  inexplicable.  Review 
ing  has  the  primal  curse  of  hard  labor  upon  it.  You 
must  do  two  kinds  of  work  at  once,  and  be  adequately 
rewarded  for  neither.  First  you  must  digest  another 
man's  conception,  assimilate  his  ideas,  absorb  his  imagi 
nation.  It  is  like  eating  a  cold  dinner  on  a  full  stom 
ach.  And  then  when  you  have  eaten  and  digested,  you 
must  tell  how  you  feel  about  it — briefly,  cogently,  and 


198  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

in  words  that  cannot  be  misunderstood.  Furthermore, 
your  feelings  must  be  typical,  must  represent  what  a 
thousand  stomachs  will  feel,  or  should  feel,  or  could 
feel  if  they  felt  at  all,  or  instead  of  being  hailed  as  a 
critic  you  will  be  accused  of  dyspepsia. 

The  mere  mental  labor  of  picking  up  the  contents 
of  a  book  as  you  proceed  with  your  criticism,  and 
tucking  them  in  here  and  there  where  they  fit,  is  so 
great  that,  speaking  as  a  reviewer,  I  should  give  up 
reviewing  if  there  were  no  more  compelling  reasons  than 
requests  to  write  criticism.  There  are,  there  must  be; 
and  still  speaking  as  a  reviewer  I  begin  to  glimpse  one 
or  two  of  them.  Revenge  is  not  one.  Critics  have 
written  for  revenge,  quoting  gleefully,  "O  that  mine 
enemy  would  write  a  book!"  Pope  is  our  classic  ex 
ample.  But  publishers  have  made  that  form  of  lit 
erary  vendetta  unprofitable  nowadays,  and  I  am  glad 
they  have  done  so.  Much  wit,  but  little  criticism,  has 
been  inspired  by  revenge.  Furthermore,  I  notice  in 
my  own  case,  and  my  editorial  self  confirms  the  belief, 
that  the  reviewer  craves  books  to  extol,  not  books  to 
condemn.  He  is  happiest  when  his  author  is  sympa 
thetic  to  his  own  temperament.  Antipathetic  books 
must  be  forced  upon  him. 

Which  leads  me  to  the  further  conclusion  that  the 
prime  motive  for  reviewing  is  the  creative  instinct.  We 
all  of  us  have  it,  all  of  the  literary  folk  who  make 
up  a  most  surprising  proportion  of  every  community 
in  the  United  States.  It  works  on  us  constantly. 
Sometimes  it  comes  to  a  head  and  then  we  do  a  story 


The  Race  of  Reviewers  199 

or  a  poem,  an  essa}'  or  a  book;  but  in  the  meantime 
it  is  constantly  alive  down  below,  drawn  toward  every 
sympathetic  manifestation  without,  craving  self-expres 
sion  and,  in  default  of  that,  expression  by  others.  If 
a  book  is  in  us  we  write;  if  it  is  not,  we  seize  upon 
another  man's  child,  adopt  it  as  ours,  talk  of  it,  learn 
to  understand  it,  let  it  go  reluctantly  with  our  blessing, 
and  depart  vicariously  satisfied.  That  is  the  hope,  the 
ever-renewed  hope,  with  which  the  besotted  reviewer 
takes  up  reviewing. 

The  creative  instinct  indeed  is  sexed,  like  the  human 
that  possesses  it.  It  seeks  a  mystical  union  with  the 
imaginings  of  others.  The  poet,  the  novelist,  the  essay 
ist,  seek  the  mind  of  the  reader;  the  critic  seeks  the 
mind  of  the  writer.  That  we  get  so  much  bad  review 
ing  is  due  to  incompatibility  of  temperament  or  gross 
discrepancy  in  the  mating  intellects.  Yet  reviewers 
(and  authors),  like  lovers,  hope  ever  for  the  perfect 
match. 

I  know  one  critic  who  tore  his  review  in  pieces  be 
cause  it  revealed  the  charlatanism  of  his  beloved  author. 
I  know  an  author  who  burnt  his  manuscript  because 
his  friend  and  critic  had  misunderstood  him.  I  see 
a  thousand  reviews  (and  have  written  several  of  them) 
where  book  and  reviewer  muddle  along  together  like  the 
partners  of  everyday  marriages.  But  next  time,  one 
always  hopes,  it  will  be  different. 

As  an  editor,  I  confess  that  I  view  all  this  effusion 
with  some  distrust.  One  plain  fact  stands  high  and 
dry  above  the  discussion:  books  are  being  published 


2OO  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

daily,  and  some  one  must  tell  the  busy  and  none  too 
discriminating  public  what  they  are  worth — not  to  men 
tion  the  librarians  who  are  so  engaged  in  making  out 
triple  cards  and  bibliographies  and  fitting  titles  to  vague 
recollections  that  they  have  no  time  left  to  read.  Fur 
thermore,  if  reviewing  is  a  chore  at  worst,  and  at  best 
a  desire  to  gratify  a  craving  for  the  unappeasable, 
editing  reviews  is  still  more  chorelike,  and  seeking  the 
unobtainable — a  good  review  for  every  good  book — is 
quite  as  soul-exhausting  as  the  creative  instinct. 

And,  again  as  an  editor,  the  perfect  marriage  of  well 
attuned  minds  is  well  enough  as  an  ideal,  but  as  a 
practicable  achievement  I  find  myself  more  often  drawn 
toward  what  I  should  call  the  liaison  function  of  a  re 
viewer.  The  desire  to  be  useful  (since  we  have  ex 
cluded  the  desire  to  make  money  as  a  major  motive)  is, 
I  believe,  an  impulse  which  ver>  often  moves  the  re 
viewer.  The  instinct  to  teach,  to  reform,  to  explain, 
to  improve  lies  close  to  the  heart  of  nine  out  of  ten 
of  us.  It  is  commoner  than  the  creative  instinct.  When 
it  combines  with  it,  one  gets  a  potential  reviewer. 

The  reviewer  as  a  liaison  officer  is  a  homelier  de 
scription  than  soul  affinity  or  intellectual  mate,  but 
it  is  quite  as  honorable.  Books  (to  the  editor)  repre 
sent,  each  one  of  them,  so  much  experience,  so  much 
thought,  so  much  imagination  differently  compounded 
in  a  story,  poem,  tractate  on  science,  history,  or  play. 
Each  is  a  man's  most  luminous  self  in  words,  ready 
for  others.  Who  wants  it?  Who  can  make  use  of  it? 
Who  will  be  dulled  by  it?  Who  exalted?  It  is  the 


The  Race  of  Reviewers  2OI 

reviewer's  task  to  say.  He  grasps  the  book,  estimates 
it,  calculates  its  audience.  Then  he  makes  the  liaison. 
He  explains,  he  interprets,  and  in  so  doing  necessarily 
criticizes,  abstracts,  appreciates.  The  service  is  ines 
timable,  when  properly  rendered.  It  is  essential  for 
that  growing  literature  of  knowledge  which  science  and 
the  work  of  specialists  in  all  fields  have  given  us.  Few 
readers  can  face  alone  and  unaided  a  shelf  of  books  on 
radio-activity,  evolution,  psychology,  or  sociology  with 
any  hope  of  selecting  without  guidance  the  best,  or 
with  any  assurance  that  they  dare  reject  as  worthless 
what  they  do  not  understand.  The  house  of  the  inter 
preter  has  become  the  literary  journal,  and  its  useful 
ness  will  increase. 

A  liaison  of  a  different  kind  is  quite  as  needful  in 
works  of  sheer  imagination.  Here  the  content  is  hu- 
jnan,  the  subject  the  heart,  or  life  as  one  sees  it.  But 
reading,  like  writing,  is  a  fine  art  that  few  master. 
Only  the  most  sensitive,  whose  minds  are  as  quick  as 
their  emotions  are  responsive,  can  go  to  the  heart  of 
a  poem  or  a  story.  They  need  an  interpreter,  a  tactful 
interpreter,  who  will  give  them  the  key  and  let  them 
find  their  own  chamber.  Or  who  will  wave  them  away 
from  the  door,  or  advise  a  brief  sojourn.  To  an  editor 
such  an  interpreter  is  an  ideal  reviewer.  He  will  desire 
to  be  useful,  and  passionately  attempt  it.  He  will  feel 
his  responsibility  first  to  art  and  next  to  the  public, 
and  then  to  his  author,  and  last  (as  an  editor  I  whisper 
it)  to  the  publisher.  Reviewers  forget  the  author  and 
the  public.  Their  mandate  comes  from  art  (whose 


2O2  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

representative  in  the  flesh  is,  or  should  be,  the  editor). 
But  their  highest  service  is  to  make  a  liaison  between 
the  reader  and  his  book. 

And  the  conclusion  of  this  debate  is,  I  think,  a 
simple  one.  Reviewing  is  a  major  sport,  fascinating 
precisely  because  of  its  difficulty,  compelling  precisely 
because  it  appeals  to  strong  instincts.  For  most  of 
us  it  satisfies  that  desire  to  work  for  some  end  which 
we  ourselves  approve,  regardless  of  costs.  The  editor, 
sardonically  aware  of  a  world  that  refuses  to  pay 
much  for  what  men  do  to  please  themselves  or  to 
reform  others,  sees  here  his  salvation,  and  is  thankful. 


The  Sins  of  Reviewing 

I  HAVE  known  thousands  of  reviewers  and  liked  most 
of  them,  except  when  they  sneered  at  my  friends  or 
at  me.  Their  profession,  in  which  I  have  taken  a 
humble  share,  has  always  seemed  to  me  a  useful,  and 
sometimes  a  noble  one;  and  their  contribution  to  the 
civilizing  of  reading  man,  much  greater  than  the  credit 
they  are  given  for  it.  We  divide  them  invidiously 
into  hack  reviewers  and  critics,  forgetting  that  a  hack 
is  just  a  reviewer  overworked,  and  a  critic  a  reviewer 
with  leisure  to  perform  real  criticism.  A  good  hack 
is  more  useful  than  a  poor  critic,  and  both  belong 
to  the  same  profession  as  surely  as  William  Shake 
speare  and  the  author  of  a  Broadway  "show." 

The  trouble  is  that  the  business  of  reviewing  has 
not  been  sufficiently  recognized  as  a  profession.  Trades 
gain  in  power  and  recognition  in  proportion  as  their 
members  sink  individuality  in  the  mass  and  form  a 
union  which  stands  as  one  man  against  the  world. 
Professions  are  different.  They  rise  by  decentraliza 
tion,  and  by  specializing  within  the  group.  They  gain 
distinction  not  only  by  the  achievements  of  their  in 
dividual  members  but  by  a  curious  splitting  into  sub 
types  of  the  species.  Law  and  medicine  are  admirable 
examples.  Every  time  they  develop  a  new  kind  of 
specialist  they  gain  in  prestige  and  emolument. 

203 


204  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

A  reviewer,  however  (unless  he  publishes  a  collected 
edition  and  becomes  a  critic),  has  so  far  remained  in 
the  eyes  of  the  public  just  a  reviewer.  In  fiction  we 
have  been  told  (by  the  reviewers)  of  romancers  and 
realists,  sociologists  and  ethicists,  naturalists  and  sym 
bolists,  objectivists  and  psychologists.  Are  there  no 
adjectives,  no  brevet  titles  of  literary  distinction  for 
the  men  and  women  who  have  made  it  possible  to  talk 
intelligently  about  modern  fiction  without  reading  it? 

My  experience  with  reviewers  has  led  me  to  classify 
them  by  temperament  rather  than  by  the  theories  they 
possess;  and  this  is  not  so  unscientific  as  it  sounds,  for 
theories  usually  spring  from  temperaments.  No  man 
whose  eliminatory  processes  function  perfectly  is  ever 
a  pessimist,  except  under  the  compulsion  of  hard  facts. 
No  sluggish  liver  ever  believes  that  joy  of  living  is 
the  prime  quality  to  be  sought  in  literary  art.  And 
by  the  same  eternal  principle,  moody  temperaments 
embrace  one  theory  of  criticism;  cold,  logical  minds 
another.  I  identify  my  classes  of  reviewers  by  their 
habits,  not  their  dogmas. 

But  in  order  to  clear  the  ground  let  me  make  first 
a  larger  distinction,  into  mythical  reviewers,  bad  but 
useful  reviewers,  bad  and  not  useful  reviewers,  and 
good  reviewers.  Like  the  nineteenth  century  preacher 
I  will  dispose  of  the  false,  dwell  upon  the  wicked,  and 
end  (briefly)  with  that  heaven  of  literary  criticism 
where  all  the  authors  are  happy  and  all  the  reviewers 
excellent. 

The  reviewer  I  know  best  never,  I  profoundly  be- 


The  Sins  of  Reviewing  205 

lieve,  has  existed,  and  I  fear  never  will  exist.  He  is  the 
familiar  figure  of  English  novels — moderately  young, 
a  bachelor,  with  a  just  insufficient  income  in  stocks. 
Oxford  or  Cambridge  is  his  background,  and  his  future 
is  the  death  of  a  rich  aunt  or  a  handsome  marriage. 
In  the  meantime,  there  is  always  a  pile  of  books  wait 
ing  in  his  chambers  to  be  reviewed  at  "a  guinea  a 
page,"  when  he  has  leisure,  which  is  apparently  only 
once  or  twice  a  week.  The  urban  pastoral  thus  pre 
sented  is  one  which  Americans  may  well  be  envious  of 
— otium  cum  dignitate.  But  I  have  never  encountered 
this  reviewer  in  London.  I  fear  he  exists  only  for  the 
novelists,  who  created  him  in  order  to  have  a  literary 
person  with  enough  time  on  his  hands  to  pursue  the 
adventures  required  by  the  plot.  Yet  in  so  far  as 
he  is  intended  as  a  portrait  of  a  critic,  he  stands  as 
an  ideal  of  the  leisured  view  of  books.  There  has  been 
no  leisured  view  of  books  in  America  since  Thoreau, 
or  Washington  Irving.  Even  Poe  was  feverish.  Our 
books  are  read  on  the  subway,  or  after  the  theater, 
and  so  I  fear  it  is  in  London — in  London  as  it  is. 

Coldly,  palpably  real  is  the  next  critic  of  my  ac 
quaintance,  the  academic  reviewer.  He  does  not  write 
for  the  newspapers,  for  he  despises  them,  and  they 
are  rather  scornful  of  his  style,  which  is  usually  lum 
bering,  and  his  idea  that  1921  is  the  proper  time  in 
which  to  review  the  books  of  1920.  But  you  will  find 
him  in  the  weeklies,  and  rampant  in  the  technical 
journals. 

The  academic  reviewer  is  besotted  by  facts,  or  their 


206  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

absence.  The  most  precious  part  of  the  review  to  him 
is  the  last  paragraph  in  which  he  points  out  misspell 
ings,  bad  punctuation,  and  inaccuracies  generally.  Like 
a  hound  dog  in  a  corn  field,  he  never  sees  his  books 
as  a  whole,  but  snouts  and  burrows  along  the  trail 
he  is  following.  If  he  knows  the  psychology  of  primi 
tive  man,  primitive  psychology  he  will  find  and  criti 
cize,  even  in  a  book  on  the  making  of  gardens.  If 
his  specialty  is  French  drama,  French  drama  he  will 
find,  even  in  a  footnote,  and  root  it  out  and  nuzzle  it. 
I  remember  when  a  famous  scholar  devoted  the  whole 
of  his  review  of  a  two  volume  magnum  opus  upon  a 
great  historical  period,  to  the  criticism  of  the  text 
of  a  Latin  hymn  cited  in  a  footnote!  The  academic 
reviewer  (by  which  I  do  not  mean  the  university  re 
viewer,  since  many  such  are  not  academic  in  the  bad 
sense  which  I  am  giving  to  the  word)  demands  an 
index.  His  reviews  usually  end  with,  "There  is  no 
index,"  or,  "There  is  an  excellent  index."  The  reason 
is  plain.  The  index  is  his  sole  guide  to  reviewing.  If 
he  finds  his  pet  topics  there  he  can  hunt  them  down 
remorselessly.  But  if  there  is  no  index,  he  is  cast 
adrift  helpless,  knowing  neither  where  to  begin  nor 
where  to  end  his  review.  I  call  him  a  bad  reviewer, 
but  useful,  because,  though  incapable  of  estimating 
philosophies  or  creations  of  the  imagination,  he  is  our 
best  guarantee  that  writers'  facts  are  facts. 

My  acquaintance  with  the  next  bad,  but  occasionally 

useful,  reviewer  is  less  extensive,  but,  by  the  circum- 

^ stances  of  the  case,  more  intimate.    I  shall  call  him 


The  Sins  of  Reviewing  207 

the  ego- frisky  reviewer.  The  term  (which  I  am  quite 
aware  is  a  barbarous  compound)  I  am  led  to  invent 
in  order  to  describe  the  phenomenon  of  a  critic  whose 
ego  frisks  merrily  over  the  corpus  of  his  book.  He 
is  not  so  modern  a  product  as  he  himself  believes. 
The  vituperative  critics  of  the  Quarterlies  and,  earlier 
still,  of  Grub  Street,  used  their  enemies'  books  as  a 
means  of  indulging  their  needs  for  self-expression. 
But  it  was  wrath,  jealousy,  vindictiveness,  or  political 
enmity  which  they  discharged  while  seated  on  the 
body  of  the  foe;  whereas  the  ego-friskish  critic  has 
no  such  bile  in  him. 

He  is  in  fact  a  product  of  the  new  advertising  psy 
chology,  which  says,  "Be  human"  (by  which  is  meant 
"be  personal")  "first  of  all."  He  regards  his  book 
(I  know  this,  because  he  has  often  told  me  so)  as  a 
text  merely,  for  a  discourse  which  must  entertain  the 
reader.  And  his  idea  of  entertainment  is  to  write 
about  himself,  his  tastes,  his  moods,  his  reactions. 
Either  he  praises  the  book  for  what  it  does  to  his 
ego,  or  damns  it  for  what  it  did  to  his  ego.  You  will 
never  catch  him  between  these  extremes,  for  modera 
tion  is  not  his  vice. 

The  ego-frisky  reviewer  is  not  what  the  biologist 
would  call  a  pure  form.  He  (or  she)  is  usually  a  yellow 
journalist,  adopting  criticism  as  a  kind  of  protective 
coloration.  The  highly  personal  critic,  adventuring,  or 
even  frolicking  among  masterpieces,  and  recording  his 
experiences,  is  the  true  type,  and  it  is  he  that  the  ego- 
friskish  imitate.  Such  a  critic  in  the  jovial  person  of 


208  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

Mr.  Chesterton,  or  Professor  Phelps,  or  Heywood 
Broun,  contributes  much  to  the  vividness  of  our  sense 
for  books.  But  their  imitators,  although  they  some 
times  enliven,  more  often  devastate  reviewing. 

Alas,  I  am  best  acquainted  among  them  all  with  the 
dull  reviewer,  who  is  neither  good  nor  useful.  The  ex 
cellent  books  he  has  poisoned  as  though  by  opiates! 
The  dull  books  he  has  made  duller !  No  one  has  cause 
to  love  him  unless  it  be  the  authors  of  weak  books, 
who  thank  their  dull  critics  for  exposing  them  in  re 
views  so  tedious  that  no  one  discovers  what  the  criti 
cism  is  about. 

The  dull  reviewer  has  two  varieties:  the  stupid  and 
the  merely  dull.  It  is  the  stupid  reviewer  who  exas 
perates  beyond  patience  the  lover  of  good  books.  He 
is  the  man  who  gets  a  book  wrong  from  the  start,  and 
then  plods  on  after  his  own  conception,  which  has  no 
reference  whatsoever  to  the  author's.  He  is  the  man 
who  takes  irony  seriously,  misses  the  symbolism  when 
there  is  any,  and  invariably  guesses  wrong  as  to  the 
sources  of  the  characters  and  the  plot. 

There  are  not  many  really  stupid  reviewers,  for  the 
most  indolent  editor  cleans  house  occasionally,  and  the 
stupid  are  the  first  to  go  out  the  back  door.  But  merely 
dull  reviewers  are  as  plentiful  as  fountain  pens.  The 
dull  reviewer,  like  Chaucer's  drunken  man,  knows 
where  he  wants  to  go  but  doesn't  know  how  to  get  there. 
He  (or  she)  has  three  favorite  paths  that  lead  nowhere, 
all  equally  devious. 

The  first  is  by  interminable  narrative.    "When  Hilda 


The  Sins  of  Reviewing  209 

was  blown  into  the  arms  of  Harold  Garth  at  the  windy 
corner  of  the  Woolworth  building,  neither  guessed  at 
what  was  to  follow.  Beginning  with  this  amusing  sit 
uation,  the  author  of  The  Yellow  Moon'  develops  a 
very  interesting  plot.  Garth  was  the  nephew  of  Miles 
Harrison,  Mayor  of  New  York.  After  graduating  from 
Williams,  etc.,  etc.,  etc."  This  is  what  he  calls  sum 
marizing  the  plot. 

Unfortunately,  the  art  of  summary  is  seldom  mas 
tered,  and  a  bad  summary  is  the  dullest  thing  in  the 
world.  Yet  even  a  bad  summary  of  a  novel  or -a  book 
of  essays  is  hard  to  do;  so  that  when  the  dull  reviewer 
has  finished,  his  sweaty  brow  and  numbed  fingers  per 
suade  him  that  he  has  written  a  review.  There  is  time 
for  just  a  word  of  quasi-criticism:  "This  book  would 
have  been  better  if  it  had  been  shorter,  and  the  plot  is 
not  always  logical.  Nevertheless,  'The  Yellow  Moon' 
holds  interest  throughout."  And  then,  finis.  This  is 
botchery  and  sometimes  butchery,  not  reviewing. 

The  dullest  reviewers  I  have  known,  however,  have 
been  the  long-winded  ones.  A  book  is  talk  about  life, 
and  therefore  talk  about  a  book  is  one  remove  more 
from  the  reality  of  experience.  Talk  about  talk  must 
be  good  talk,  and  it  must  be  sparing  of  words.  A  con 
cise  style  is  nearly  always  an  interesting  style:  even 
though  it  repel  by  crudity  it  will  never  be  dull.  But 
conciseness  is  not  the  quality  I  most  often  detect  in 
reviewing.  It  is  luxurious  to  be  concise  when  one  is 
writing  at  space  rates;  and  it  is  always  harder  to  say 
a  thing  briefly  than  at  length,  just  as  it  is  easier  for 


2io  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

a  woman  to  hit  a  nail  at  the  third  stroke  than  at  the 
first. 

I  once  proposed  a  competition  in  a  college  class  in 
English  composition.  Each  student  was  to  clip  a  col 
umn  newspaper  article  of  comment  (not  facts)  and 
condense  it  to  the  limit  of  safety.  Then  editorials  gave 
up  their  gaseous  matter  in  clouds,  chatty  news  stories 
boiled  away  to  paragraphs,  and  articles  shrank  up  to 
their  headlines. 

But  the  reviews  suffered  most.  One,  I  remember, 
came  down  to  "It  is  a  bad  book,"  or  to  express  it 
algebraically,  (It  is  a  bad  book)3.  Another  disappeared 
entirely.  On  strict  analysis  it  was  discovered  that  the 
reviewer  had  said  nothing  not  canceled  out  by  some 
thing  else.  But  most  remained  as  a  weak  liquor  of 
comment  upon  which  floated  a  hard  cake  of  undigested 
narrative.  One  student  found  a  bit  of  closely  reasoned 
criticism  that  argued  from  definite  evidences  to  a  con 
crete  conclusion.  It  was  irreducible;  but  this  was  a 
unique  experience. 

The  long-winded  are  the  dullest  of  dull  reviewers, 
but  the  most  pernicious  are  the  wielders  of  cliches  and 
platitudes.  Is  there  somewhere  a  reviewer's  manual, 
like  the  manual  of  correct  social  phrases  which  some 
one  has  recently  published?  I  would  believe  it  from 
the  evidence  of  a  hundred  reviews  in  which  the  same 
phrases,  differently  arranged,  are  applied  to  fifty  dif 
ferent  books.  I  would  believe  it,  except  for  the  known 
capacity  of  man  to  borrow  most  of  his  thoughts  and 
all  of  his  phrases  from  his  neighbor.  I  know  too  well 


The  Sins  of  Reviewing  2il 

that  writers  may  operate  like  the  Federal  Reserve 
banks,  except  that  in  literature  there  is  no  limit  to 
inflation.  A  thousand  thousand  may  use  "a  novel  of 
daring  adventure,"  "a  poem  full  of  grace  and  beauty," 
or  "shows  the  reaction  of  a  thoughtful  mind  to  the  facts 
of  the  universe,"  without  exhausting  the  supply.  It  is 
like  the  manufacture  of  paper  money,  and  the  effect 
on  credit  is  precisely  the  same. 

So  much  for  the  various  types  of  reviewers  who, 
however  interesting  they  may  be  critically,  cannot  be 
called  good.  The  good  reviewers,  let  an  uncharitable 
world  say  what  it  will,  are,  thank  heaven!  more  numer 
ous.  Their  divisions,  temperamental  and  intellectual, 
present  a  curious  picture  of  the  difficulties  and  the 
rewards  of  this  profession.  Yet  I  cannot  enter  upon 
them  here,  and  for  good  reasons. 

The  good  reviewer  is  like  the  good  teacher  and  the 
good  preacher.  He  is  not  rare,  but  he  is  precious. 
He  has  qualities  that  almost  escape  analysis  and  there 
fore  deserve  more  than  a  complimentary  discussion. 
He  must  hold  his  book  like  a  crystal  ball  in  which  he 
sees  not  only  its  proper  essence  in  perfect  clarity,  but 
also  his  own  mind  mirrored.  He  must —  ...  In 
other  words,  the  good  reviewer  deserves  an  essay  of 
his  own.  He  is  a  genius  in  a  minor  art,  which  some 
times  becomes  major;  a  craftsman  whose  skill  is  often 
exceptional.  I  will  not  put  him  in  the  same  apartment 
with  reviewers  who  are  arid,  egoistic,  or  dull. 


Mrs.  Wharton's  "The  Age  of 
Innocence" 

AMERICA  is  the  land  of  cherished  illusions.  Americans 
prefer  to  believe  that  they  are  innocent,  innocent  of 
immorality  after  marriage,  innocent  of  dishonesty  in 
business,  innocent  of  incompatibility  between  husbands 
and  wives.  Americans  do  not  like  to  admit  the  exist 
ence  (in  the  family)  of  passion,  of  unscrupulousness, 
of  temperament.  They  have  made  a  code  for  what 
is  to  be  done,  and  what  is  not  to  be  done,  and  what 
ever  differs  is  un-American.  If  their  right  hands  offend 
them  they  cut  them  off  rather  than  admit  possession. 
They  believed  in  international  morality  when  none  ex 
isted,  and  when  they  were  made  to  face  the  disagree 
able  fact  of  war,  cast  off  the  nations  of  the  earth, 
and  continued  to  believe  in  national  morality. 

In  America  prostitution  is  tolerated  in  practice,  but 
forbidden  in  print.  All  homes  are  happy  unless  there 
is  proof  to  the  contrary,  and  then  they  are  un-American. 
In  its  wilful  idealism  America  is  determined  that  at 
all  costs  we  shall  appear  to  be  innocent.  And  a  novel 
which  should  begin  with  the  leaders  in  social  conform 
ity,  who  keep  hard  and  clean  the  code,  and  should 
sweep  through  the  great  middle  classes  that  may  escape 
its  rigors  themselves,  but  exact  them  of  others,  might 
present  the  pageant,  the  social  history,  the  epic  of 
America. 

212 


Wharton's  "The  Age  of  Innocence"        213 

Of  course,  Mrs.  Wharton's  novel  does  nothing  of 
the  sort.  This  is  how  Tolstoy,  or  H.  G.  Wells,  or 
Ernest  Poole  would  have  written  "The  Age  of  Inno 
cence."  They  would  have  been  grandiose,  epical;  their 
stories  would  have  been  histories  of  culture.  It  would 
have  been  as  easy  to  have  called  their  books  broad 
as  it  is  to  call  Mrs.  Wharton's  fine  novel  narrow.  Ten 
dencies,  philosophies,  irrepressible  outbursts  would  have 
served  as  their  protagonists,  where  hers  are  dwellers 
in  Fifth  Avenue  or  Waverly  Place — a  cosmopolitan 
astray,  a  dowager,  a  clubman  yearning  for  intellectual 
sympathy. 

And  yet  in  the  long  run  it  comes  to  much  the  same 
thing.  The  epic  novelists  prefer  the  panorama:  she 
the  drawing-room  canvas.  They  deduce  from  vast 
philosophies  and  depict  society.  She  gives  us  the  Min- 
gotts,  the  Mansons,  the  Van  der  Luydens — society,  in 
its  little  brownstone  New  York  of  the  'yo's — and  lets  us 
formulate  inductively  the  code  of  America.  A  little 
canvas  is  enough  for  a  great  picture  if  the  painting  is 
good. 

Indeed,  the  only  objection  I  have  ever  heard  urged 
against  Mrs.  Wharton's  fine  art  of  narrative  is  that 
it  is  narrow — an  art  of  dress  suit  and  sophistication. 
And  this  book  is  th'e  answer.  For,  of  course,  her  art 
is  narrow — like  Jane  Austen's,  like  Sheridan's,  like 
Pope's,  like  Maupassant's,  like  that  of  all  writers  who 
prefer  to  study  human  nature  in  its  most  articulate 
instead  of  its  broadest  manifestations.  It  is  narrow 
because  it  is  focussed,  but  this  does  not  mean  that  it 


214  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

is  small.  Although  the  story  of  "The  Age  of  Inno 
cence"  might  have  been  set  in  a  far  broader  back 
ground,  it  is  the  circumstances  of  the  New  York  society 
which  Mrs.  Wharton  knows  so  well  that  give  it  a 
piquancy,  a  reality  that  "epics"  lack.  They  are  like 
the  accidents  of  voice,  eye,  gesture  which  determine 
individuality.  Yet  her  subject  is  America. 

This  treating  of  large  themes  by  highly  personal  sym 
bols  makes  possible  Mrs.  Wharton's  admirable  perfec 
tion  of  technique.  Hers  is  the  technique  of  sculpture 
rather  than  the  technique  of  architecture.  It  permits 
the  fine  play  of  a  humor  that  has  an  eye  of  irony  in 
it,  but  is  more  human  than  irony.  It  makes  possible 
an  approach  to  perfection.  Behold  Mrs.  Manson  Min- 
gott,  the  indomitable  dowager,  Catherine: 

The  immense  accretions  of  flesh  which  had  descended  on 
her  in  middle  life,  like  a  flood  of  lava  on  a  doomed  city  had 
changed  her  .  .  .  into  something  as  vast  and  august  as  a 
natural  phenomenon.  She  had  accepted  this  submergence  as 
philosophically  as  all  her  other  trials,  and  now,  in  extreme 
old  age,  was  rewarded  by  presenting  to  her  mirror  an  almost 
unwrinkled  expanse  of  firm  pink  and  white  flesh,  in  the 
center  of  which  the  traces  of  a  small  face  survived  as  if 
awaiting  excavation.  .  .  .  Around  and  below,  wave  after 
wave  of  black  silk  surged  away  over  the  edges  of  a  capacious 
armchair,  with  two  tiny  white  hands  poised  like  gulls  on  the 
surface  of  the  billows. 

Her  art  is  restrained,  focussed  upon  those  points 
where  America,  in  its  normality  and  in  its  eccentricity, 


Whartons  "The  Age  of  Innocence"        21$ 

has  become  articulate.    Therefore  it  is  sharp  and  con 
vincing. 

Who  is  the  central  figure  in  this  story  where  the 
leaven  of  intellectual  and  emotional  unrest  works  in  a 
society  that  has  perfected  its  code  and  intends  to  live 
by  it?  Is  it  Newland  Archer,  who  bears  the  uncom 
fortable  ferment  within  him?  Is  it  his  wife,  the  lovely 
May,  whose  clear  blue  eyes  will  see  only  innocence? 
Is  it  the  Countess  Olenska,  the  American  who  has  seen 
reality  and  suffered  by  it,  and  sacrifices  her  love  for 
Newland  in  order  to  preserve  his  innocence?  No  one 
of  these  is  the  center  of  the  story,  but  rather  the  idea 
of  "the  family,"  this  American  "family,"  which  is  moral 
according  to  its  lights,  provincial,  narrow — but  in 
tensely  determined  that  its  world  shall  appear  upright, 
faithful,  courageous,  in  despite  of  facts,  and  regardless 
of  how  poor  reality  must  be  tortured  until  it  conforms. 
And  the  "family"  as  Mrs.  Wharton  describes  it  is  just 
the  bourgeois  Puritanism  of  nineteenth  century 
America. 

Was  May  right  when,  with  the  might  of  innocence, 
she  forced  Newland  to  give  up  life  for  mere  living? 
Was  the  Countess  right  when,  in  spite  of  her  love 
for  him,  she  aided  and  abetted  her,  making  him  live 
up  to  the  self-restraint  that  belonged  to  his  code?  The 
story  does  not  answer,  being  concerned  with  the  qual 
ities  of  the  "family,"  not  with  didacticism. 

It  says  that  the  insistent  innocence  of  America  had 
its  rewards  as  well  as  its  penalties.  It  says,  in  so 


216  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

far  as  it  states  any  conclusion  definitely,  that  a  new 
and  less  trammeled  generation  must  answer  whether  it 
was  the  discipline  of  its  parents  that  saved  the  Ameri 
can  family  from  anarchy,  or  the  suppressions  of  its 
parents  that  made  it  rebellious.  And  the  answer  is 
not  yet. 

"The  Age  of  Innocence"  is  a  fine  novel,  beautifully 
written,  "big"  in  the  best  sense,  which  has  nothing  to 
do  with  size,  a  credit  to  American  literature — for  if 
its  author  is  cosmopolitan,  this  novel,  as  much  as  her 
earlier  "Ethan  Frome,"  is  a  fruit  of  our  soil. 

November  6,  1920. 


Mr.  Hergesheimer's  "Cytherea" 

MRS.  WHARTON  found  the  age  of  innocence  in  the 
iSyo's;  Mr.  Hergesheimer  discovers  an  age  of  no  inno 
cence  in  the  1 920*3.  In  "The  Age  of  Innocence/'  the 
lovely  May,  a  creature  of  society's  conventions,  loses 
her  husband  and  then  regains  the  dulled  personality 
left  from  the  fire  of  passion.  In  "Cytherea"  the  less 
lovely,  but  equally  moral  Fanny  loses  her  Lee  because 
she  cannot  satisfy  his  longings  and  nags  when  she  fails. 
But  she  does  not  regain  him  when  his  love  chase  is 
over,  because  he  is  burned  out.  Athene  and  Aphrodite, 
the  graces  of  the  mind,  the  seductions  of  the  person 
of  the  Countess  Olenska,  together  draw  Newland 
Archer,  husband  of  May;  but  it  is  Aphrodite  only, 
Cytherean  Aphrodite,  who,  being  sex  incarnate,  is  more 
than  mere  temptations  of  the  flesh,  that  wrecks  Fanny's 
home. 

In  the  'yo's  the  poor  innocents  of  society  believed 
their  code  of  honor  impregnable  against  sex.  They 
dressed  against  sex,  talked  against  sex,  kept  sex  below 
the  surface.  The  suppression  froze  some  of  them  into 
rigidity  and  stiffened  all.  But  they  had  their  compen 
sations.  By  sacrificing  freedom  for  personal  desire 
they  gained  much  security.  Good  husbands  required 
more  than  a  lure  of  the  body  to  take  them  off.  And 
when  they  gave  up  a  great  romance  for  respectability, 

217 


21 8  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

like  Newland  Archer,  at  least  they  remained  gentlemen. 
There  was  a  tragedy  of  thwarted  development,  of  mar 
tyred  love,  of  waste;  but  at  least  self-respect,  however 
misguided,  remained. 

Not  so  with  this  trivial,  lawless  country  club  set  of 
the  i92o's,  drunk  part  of  the  time  and  reckless  all  of 
it,  codeless,  dutiless,  restless.  For  the  virtuous  among 
them  Aphrodite,  a  vulgar,  shameless  Aphrodite,  was  a 
nightly  menace;  for  the  weak  among  them  (such  as 
Peyton  Morris),  a  passion  to  be  resisted  only  by  fear; 
for  the  wayward,  like  Lee,  she  was  the  only  illusion 
worth  pursuing.  To  resist  for  a  woman  was  to  become 
"blasted  and  twisted  out  of  her  purpose,"  to  be 
"steeped  in  vinegar  or  filled  with  tallow" ;  to  resist  for 
a  man  was  to  lose  the  integrity  of  his  personality. 
There  were  no  moral  compensations,  for  there  is  no 
morality  but  self-development,  at  least  in  Mr.  Herges- 
heimer's  town  of  Eastlake.  There  is  no  god  for  a  man 
in  love  but  Cytherea. 

And  this  is  one  way  of  describing  Mr.  Hergesheimer's 
study  of  love  in  idleness  in  the  1 920*5.  Another  way 
would  be  to  call  it  an  essay  upon  insecurity,  although 
the  word  essay  is  too  dry  to  use  in  a  story  which  is  fairly 
awash  with  alcohol.  The  war,  the  story  seems  to  say, 
sapped  our  security  of  property  and  comfort  and  life. 
But  insecurity  is  an  insidious  disease  that  spreads,  like 
bacteria,  where  strength  is  relaxed.  It  infects  the  lives 
of  those  who  have  lost  their  certainties  and  become 
doubtful  of  their  wills.  In  this  relaxed  society  of  the 
1920*5,  where  nothing  seemed  certain  but  the  need  of 


Mr.  Hergesheimer  s  "Cytherea"        219 

money  and  a  drink,  insecurity  spread  into  married  life. 
Not  even  the  well-mated  were  secure  in  the  general 
decline  of  use  and  wont.  A  home  wrecked  by  vague 
desires  running  wild— that  is  the  theme  of  "Cytherea." 

Or  take  a  third  view  of  this  provocative  book.  The 
triangle  we  have  had  tiresomely  with  us,  but  it  is 
woman's  love  that  is,  perversely,  always  the  hero. 
Hergesheimer  studies  the  man,  studies  him  not  as  will, 
or  energy,  or  desire  a-struggle  with  duty  or  morality, 
but  merely  as  sex.  Man's  sex  in  love,  man's  sex  domi 
nated  by  Cytherea,  is  his  theme.  This  is  new,  at  least 
in  fiction,  for  there  man  is  often  swept  away,  but  seldom 
dominated  by  sex.  And  indeed  Hergesheimer  has  to 
find  his  man  in  the  relaxed  society  to  which  I  have 
referred,  a  society  wearied  by  unchartered  freedom, 
where  business  is  profitable  but  trivial,  where  duty  and 
religion  exist  only  as  a  convention,  disregarded  by  the 
honest,  upheld  by  the  hypocritical,  a  society  where 
Cytherea  marks  and  grips  her  own.  Even  so,  it  is  an 
achievement. 

Cytherea  in  the  story  is  a  doll  with  a  glamorous 
countenance,  bought  and  cherished  by  Lee  Randon  as 
a  symbol  of  what  he  did  not  find  in  his  married  life, 
what  no  man  finds  and  keeps,  because  it  is  an  illusion. 
Cytherea  is  Lee  Randon's  longing  for  emotional  satis 
faction,  a  satisfaction  that  is  not  to  be  of  the  body 
merely.  And  when  he  meets  Savina  Grove,  a  patho 
logical  case,  whose  violent  sex  emotions  have  been 
inhibited  to  the  bursting  point,  he  thinks  (and  fears) 
that  he  has  found  his  heart's  desire.  In  the  old,  old 


22O  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

stories  their  elopement  would  have  been  their  grand, 
their  tragic  romance.  In  this  cruel  novel  it  is  tragic, 
for  she  dies  of  it;  but  she  is  not  Cytherea;  she  is 
earthly  merely;  it  is  felt  that  she  is  better  dead. 

It  is  a  cruel  story,  cruel  in  its  depiction  of  an  almost 
worthless  society  with  just  enough  of  the  charm  of  the 
Restoration  to  save  it  from  beastliness;  cruel  in  its  un 
sparing  analyses  of  man's  sex  impulses  (by  all  odds  the 
most  valuable  part  of  the  story);  cruel  particularly 
because  the  ruined  Lee  Randon  is  a  good  fellow,  hon- 
ester  than  most,  kinder  than  he  knows  to  individuals, 
although  certain  that  there  is  no  principle  but  selfish 
ness,  and  that  it  is  folly  to  limit  desire  for  the  sake 
of  absolutes,  like  righteousness,  or  generalities,  like  the 
human  race.  It  is  a  cruel  study  of  women,  for  Fanny, 
the  model  of  the  domestic  virtues,  has  lost  her  innocent 
certainties  of  the  triumph  of  the  right  and  at  the  first 
conflict  with  Cytherea  becomes  a  common  scold;  cruel 
to  Savina  Grove,  who,  in  spite  of  her  exquisiteness,  is 
only  a  psychoanalyst's  problem;  cruel  to  us  all  in  ex 
posing  so  ruthlessly  how  distressing  it  is  to  live  by 
stale  morality,  yet  how  devastating  to  act  with  no 
guide  but  illusory  desire. 

All  this  is  not  new  in  outline.  One  can  find  the  es 
sence  of  this  story  in  monkish  manuals.  There  the 
menace  of  Cytherea  was  not  evaded.  There  the  weak 
nesses  of  man's  sex  were  categoried  with  less  psychol 
ogy  but  more  force.  What  is  new  in  Hergesheimer's 
book  is  merely  the  environment  in  which  his  characters 
so  disastrously  move  and  an  insight  into  the  mechanism 


Mr.  Hergesheimer's  "Cytherea"        221 

of  their  psychology  which  earlier  writers  lacked.  I 
have  called  it  a  story  of  the  age  of  no  innocence,  but 
that  would  be  the  author's  term,  not  mine;  for  indeed 
his  characters  seem  to  display  as  naive  an  innocence 
as  Mrs.  Wharton's  of  the  laws  of  blood  and  will,  and 
they  know  far  less  of  practical  morality.  The  "Age 
of  Moral  Innocence"  I  should  rechristen  Hergesheimer's 
book. 

Critics  will  raise,  and  properly,  a  question  as  to  the 
worth  of  his  materials.  He  is  not  studying  a  "ripe" 
society,  as  was  Mrs.  Wharton,  but  the  froth  of  the 
war,  the  spume  of  country  clubs,  the  trivialities  of 
the  strenuous  but  unproductive  rich.  This  is  a  just 
criticism  as  far  as  it  goes,  and  it  lessens  the  solidity, 
the  enduring  interest,  of  his.achievement.  True,  it  was 
in  such  a  society  that  he  could  best  pursue  the  wiles 
of  Cytherea.  He  has  a  right  to  pitch  his  laboratory 
where  he  pleases,  and  out  of  some  very  sordid  earth 
he  has  contrived  some  beauty.  Nevertheless,  you  can 
not  make  a  silk  purse  out  of  a  sow's  ear,  skilled  though 
you  may  be. 

I  should  be  more  inclined,  however,  in  a  comparison 
with  Mrs.  Wharton,  to  criticize  his  lack  of  detachment. 
That  able  novelist,  who  is  bounded  so  exclusively  in 
her  little  social  world,  nevertheless  stands  apart  from 
it  and  sees  it  whole.  Mr.  Hergesheimer  has  his  feet 
still  deep  in  the  soil.  He  is  too  much  a  part  of  his 
country  club  life.  He  means,  perhaps,  to  be  ironical, 
but  in  truth  he  is  too  sympathetic  with  the  desires, 


222  The  Reviewing  of  Books 

emotional  and  esthetic,  that  he  expresses  to  be  ironical 
until  the  close.  There  is  a  surprise,  too  sharp  a  sur 
prise,  at  the  end  of  his  novel,  when  one  discovers  that 
the  moral  is  not  "do  and  dare,"  but  "all  is  vanity." 
He  is  so  much  and  so  lusciously  at  home  with  cock 
tails,  legs,  limousine  parties,  stair-sittings,  intra-matri- 
monial  kissings  (I  mention  the  most  frequent  refer 
ences)  that  one  distrusts  the  sudden  sarcasm  of  his 
finale.  It  would  have  been  better  almost  if  he  had  been 
a  Count  de  Gramont  throughout,  for  he  has  a  flair 
for  the  surroundings  of  amorous  adventure  and  is  sel 
dom  gross;  better  still  to  have  seen,  as  Mrs.  Wharton 
saw,  the  picture  in  perspective  from  the  first.  His  book 
will  disgust  some  and  annoy  others  because  its  art  is 
muddied  by  a  lingering  naturalism  and  too  highly  col 
ored  by  the  predilections  of  the  artist. 

It  is  a  skilful  art,  nevertheless,  and  "Cytherea"  con 
firms  a  judgment  long  held  that  Mr.  Hergesheimer  is 
one  of  the  most  skilful  craftsmen  in  English  in  our  day. 
And  this  I  say  in  spite  of  his  obvious  failure  to  grasp 
inevitably  the  structure  of  the  English  sentence.  He 
is  one  of  the  most  honest  analysts  of  a  situation,  also; 
one  of  the  most  fearless  seekers  of  motives;  one  of 
the  ablest  practisers  of  that  transmutation  of  obscure 
emotion  into  the  visible  detail  of  dress,  habit,  expres 
sion,  which  is  the  real  technique  of  the  novelist.  His 
fault  is  a  defect  in  sympathy,  a  lack  of  spiritual  appre 
ciation,  if  I  may  use  and  leave  undefined  so  old-fash 
ioned  a  term.  His  virtue  lies  in  the  rich  garment  of 
experience  which  careful  observation  and  skilful  writ- 


Mr.  Hergesheimer's  "Cytherea"        223 

ing  enable  him  to  wrap  about  his  imaginative  concep 
tions.  It  is  this  which  makes  his  novels  so  readable  for 
the  discriminating  at  present,  and  will  make  them  useful 
historical  records  in  the  future.  One  aspect  jof  a  trou 
blesome  period  when  the  middle  generation  achieved 
the  irresponsibility  without  the  earnestness  of  youth 
he  has  caught  in  "Cytherea."  It  is  unfortunate  that  it 
is  a  partial  portrait  of  important  motives  in  people  who 
themselves  are  of  little  importance;  and  it  is  doubly  un 
fortunate  that  he  has  been  too  much  a  part  of  his 
muddy  world  to  be  as  good  an  interpreter  as  he  is  a 
witness  of  its  life. 
January  21,  1922. 


V 

Philistines  and  Dilettante 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetical 

I  HAVE  looked  through  more  essays  upon  poetry  than 
I  care  to  remember  withoi.t  finding  anywhere  a  discus 
sion  of  poetry  for  the  unpoetical.  A  recent  writer,  it 
is  true,  has  done  much  to  show  that  the  general  reader 
daily  indulges  in  poetry  of  a  kind  without  knowing  it. 
But  the  voluminous  literature  of  poetics  is  well-nigh  all 
special.  It  is  written  for  students  of  rhythm,  for  in 
stinctive  lovers  of  poetry,  for  writers  of  verse,  for 
critics.  It  does  not  treat  of  the  value  of  poetry  for 
the  average,  the  unpoetical  man — it  says  little  of  his 
curious  distaste  for  all  that  is  not  prose,  or  of  the 
share  in  all  good  poetry  that  belongs  to  him. 

By  the  average  man,  let  me  hasten  to  say,  I  mean 
in  this  instance  the  average  intelligent  reader,  who  has 
passed  through  the  usual  formal  education  in  literature, 
who  reads  books  as  well  as  newspapers  and  magazines, 
who,  without  calling  himself  a  litterateur,  would  be  will 
ing  to  assert  that  he  was  fairly  well  read  and  reasonably 
fond  of  good  reading.  Your  doctor,  your  lawyer,  the 
president  of  your  bank,  and  any  educated  business 
man  who  has  not  turned  his  brain  into  a  machine,  will 
fit  my  case. 

Among  such  excellent  Americans,  I  find  that  there 
exists  a  double  standard  as  regards  all  literature,  but 

227 


228  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

especially  poetry.  Just  as  the  newspapers  always  write 
of  clean  politics  with  reverence — whatever  may  be  the 
private  opinions  and  practices  of  their  editorial  writers 
— so  intelligent,  though  unpoetic,  readers  are  accus 
tomed  to  speak  of  poetry  with  very  considerable  re 
spect.  It  is  not  proper  to  say,  "I  hate  poetry,"  even 
if  one  thinks  it.  To  admit  ignorance  of  Tennyson  or 
Milton  or  Shakespeare  is  bad  form,  even  if  one  skimmed 
through  them  in  college  and  has  never  disturbed  the 
dust  upon  their  covers  since.  I  have  heard  a  whispered, 
sneering  remark  after  dinner,  "I  don't  believe  he  ever 
heard  of  Browning,"  by  one  who  had  penetrated  about 
as  far  into  Browning's  inner  consciousness  as  a  fly 
into  the  hickory-nut  it  crawls  over.  I  well  remember 
seeing  a  lady  of  highly  respectable  culture  hold  up  her 
hands  in  horror  before  a  college  graduate  who  did  not 
know  who  Beowulf  was.  Neither  did  she,  in  any  true 
sense  of  knowing.  But  her  code  taught  her  that  the 
"Beowulf,"  like  other  "good  poetry,"  should  be  upon 
one's  list  of  acquaintances. 

What  these  Americans  really  think  is  a  very  different 
matter.  The  man  in  the  trolley-car,  the  woman  in  the 
rocking-chair,  the  clerk,  the  doctor,  the  manufacturer, 
most  lawyers,  and  some  ministers  would,  if  their  hearts 
were  opened,  give  simply  a  categorical  negative.  They 
do  not  like  poetry,  or  they  think  they  do  not  like  it; 
in  either  case  with  the  same  result.  The  rhythm  an 
noys  them  (little  wonder,  since  they  usually  read  it 
as  prose),  the  rhyme  seems  needless,  the  inversions, 
the  compressions  perplex  their  minds  to  no  valuable 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetlcal  229 

end.    Speaking  honestly,  they  do  not  like  poetry.    And 
if  their  reason  is  the  old  one, 

I  do  not  like  you,  Dr.  Fell; 
The  reason  why  I  cannot  tell, 

it  is  none  the  less  effective. 

But  the  positive  answers  are  no  more  reassuring. 
Here  in  America  especially,  when  we  like  poetry,  we 
like  it  none  too  good.  The  "old  favorites"  are  almost 
all  platitudinous  in  thought  and  monotonous  in  rhythm. 
We  prefer  sentiment,  and  have  a  weakness  for  slush. 
Pathos  seems  to  us  better  than  tragedy,  anecdote  than 
wit.  Longfellow  was  and  is,  except  in  metropolitan 
centres,  our  favorite  "classical"  poet;  the  poetical  cor 
ner  and  the  daily  poem  of  the  newspapers  represent 
what  most  of  us  like  when  we  do  go  in  for  verse.  The 
truth  is  that  many  of  the  intelligent  in  our  population 
skip  poetry  in  their  reading  just  because  it  is  poetry. 
They  read  no  poetry,  or  they  read  bad  poetry  occa 
sionally,  or  they  read  good  poetry  badly. 

This  sorry  state  of  affairs  does  not  trouble  the  lit 
erary  critic.  His  usual  comment  is  that  either  one 
loves  poetry  or  one  does  not,  and  that  is  all  there  is 
to  be  said  about  it.  If  the  general  reader  neglects 
poetry,  why  then  he  belongs  to  the  Lost  Tribes  and 
signifies  nothing  for  Israel. 

I  am  sure  that  he  is  wrong.  His  assertion  is  based 
on  the  theory  that  every  man  worthy  of  literary  salva 
tion  must  at  all  times  love  and  desire  the  best  literature, 
which  is  poetry — and  this  is  a  fallacy.  It  is  as  absurd 


230  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

as  if  he  should  ask  most  of  us  to  dwell  in  religious  ex 
altation  incessantly,  or  to  live  exclusively  upon  moun 
tain  peaks,  or  to  cultivate  rapture  during  sixteen  hours 
of  the  twenty-four.  The  saints,  the  martyrs,  the  seers, 
the  seekers,  and  enthusiasts  have  profited  nobly  by  such 
a  regime,  but  not  we  of  common  clayey  To  assume  in 
advocating  the  reading  of- poetry' tKat  one  should  sub 
stitute  Pope  for  the  daily  paper,  Francis  Thompson  for 
the  illustrated  weekly,  The  Ring  and  the  Book  for 
a  magazine,  and  read  "The  Golden  Treasury"  through 
instead  of  a  novel,  needs  only  to  be  stated  to  be  dis 
proved.  And  yet  this  is  the  implication  of  much  lit 
erary  criticism. 

But  the  sin  of  the  general  reader  who  refuses  all 
poetry  is  much  more  deadly,  for  it  is  due  not  to  en 
thusiasm,  but  to  ignorance.  It  is  true  that  the  literary 
diet  recommended  by  an  esthetic  critic  would  choke  a 
healthy  business  man;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  for 
all  men  whose  emotions  are  still  alive  within  them, 
and  whose  intelligence  permits  the  reading  of  verse, 
poetry  is  quite  as  valuable  as  fresh  air  and  exercise. 
We  do  not  need  fresh  air  and  exercise  constantly.  We 
can  get  along  very  comfortably  without  them.  But 
if  they  are  not  essential  commodities,  they  are  impor 
tant  ones,  and  so  is  poetry — a  truth  of  which  modern 
readers  seem  to  be  as  ignorant  as  was  primitive  man  of 
fire  until  he  burned  his  hand  in  a  blazing  bush. 

I  do  not  mean  for  an  instant  to  propose  that  every 
one  should  read  poetry.  The  man  whose  imagination 
has  never  taken  fire  from  literature  of  any  kind,  whose 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetical  231 

brain  is  literal  and  dislikes  any  embroidery  upon  the 
surface  of  plain  fact,  who  is  deaf  to  music,  unrespon 
sive  to  ideas,  and  limited  in  his  emotions — such  a  man 
in  my  opinion  is  unfortunate,  although  he  is  often  an 
excellent  citizen,  lives  happily,  makes  a  good  husband, 
and  may  save  the  state.  But  he  should  not  (no  danger 
that  he  will)  read  poetry.  And  for  another  class  there 
is  nothing  in  poetry.  The  emotionally  dying  or  dead; 
the  men  who  have  sunk  themselves,  their  personalities, 
their  hopes,  their  happiness,  in  business  or  scholarship 
or  politics  or  sport — they,  too,  are  often  useful  citizens, 
and  usually  highly  prosperous;  but  they  would  waste 
their  time  upon  literature  of  any  variety,  and  especially 
upon  poetry. 

There  are  a  dozen  good  arguments,  however,  to  prove 
that  the  reading  of  poetry  is  good  for  the  right  kind 
of  general  reader,  who  is  neither  defective  nor  dead 
in  his  emotions;  and  this  means,  after  all,  a  very  large 
percentage  of  all  readers.  If  I  had  space  I  should  use 
them  all,  for  I  realize  that  the  convention  we  have 
adopted  for  poetry  makes  us  skip,  in  our  magazines, 
as  naturally  from  story  to  story  over  the  verse  between 
as  from  stone  to  stone  across  the  brook.  However,  I 
choose  only  two,  which  seem  to  me  as  convincing  for 
the  unpoetical  reader  (the  dead  and  defective  excepted) 
as  the  ethical  grandeur  of  poetry,  let  us  say,  for  the 
moralist,  its  beauty  for  the  esthete,  its  packed  knowl 
edge  for  the  scholar. 

The  first  has  often  been  urged  before  and  far  more 
often  overlooked.  We  everyday  folk  plod  year  after 


232  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

year  through  routine,  through  fairly  good  or  fairly  bad, 
never  quite  realizing  what  we  are  experiencing,  never 
seeing  life  as  a  whole,  or  any  part  of  it,  perhaps,  in 
complete  unity.  Words,  acts,  sights,  pass  through  our 
experience  hazily,  suggesting  meanings  which  we  never 
fully  grasp.  Grief  and  love,  the  most  intense,  perhaps, 
of  sensations,  we  seldom  understand  except  by  compari 
son  with  what  has  been  said  of  the  grief  and  love  of 
others.  Happiness  remains  at  best  a  diffused  emotion 
— felt,  but  not  comprehended.  Thought,  if  in  some 
moment  of  intense  clarity  it  grasps  our  relationship  to 
the  stream  of  life,  in  the  next  shreds  into  trivialities. 
Is  this  true?  Test  it  by  any  experience  that  is  still 
fresh  in  memory.  See  how  dull,  by  comparison  with 
the  vivid  colors  of  the  scene  itself,  are  even  now  your 
ideas  of  what  it  meant  to  you,  how  obscure  its  rela 
tions  to  your  later  life.  The  moment  you  fell  in  love, 
the  hour  after  your  child  had  died,  the  instant  when 
you  reached  the  peak,  the  quarrel  that  began  a  mis 
understanding  not  yet  ended,  the  subtle  household 
strain  that  pulls  apart  untiringly  though  it  never  sun 
ders  two  who  love  each  other — all  these  I  challenge 
you  to  define,  to  explain,  to  lift  into  the  light  above 
the^fcurbid  sea  of  complex  currents  which  is  life. 
/And  this,  of  course,  is  what  good  poetry  does.  It 
seizes  the  moment,  the  situation,  the  thought;  drags 
it  palpitating  from  life  and  flings  it,  quivering  with  its 
own  rhythmic  movement,  into  expression.  Tb&~tiriffg~ 
cannot  be  done  in  mere  prose,  for  there  is  more  than 
explanation  to  the  process.  The  words  themselves,  in 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetical  233 

their  color  and  suggestiveness,  the  rhythms  that  carry 
them,  contribute  to  the  sense,  even  as  overtones  help 
to  make  the  music. 

All  this  may  sound  a  little  exalted  to  the  com 
fortable  general  reader,  who  does  not  often  deal  in 
such  intense  commodities  as  death  and  love.  And 
yet  I  have  mentioned  nothing  that  does  not  at  one 
time  or  another,  and  frequently  rather  than  the  oppo 
site,  come  into  his  life,  and  need,  not  constant,  certainly, 
but  at  least  occasional,  interpretation.  Death  and  love, 
and  also  friendship,  jealousy,  courage,  self-sacrifice, 
hate — these  cannot  be  avoided.  We  must  experience 
them.  So  do  the  animals,  who  gain  from  their  experi 
ences  blind,  instinctive  repulsions  or  unreasoning  likes 
and  distrusts.  There  are  many  ways  of  escaping  from 
such  a  bovine  acquiescence,  content  to  have  felt,  not 
desirous  to  grasp  and  know  and  relate.  Poetry,  which 
clears  and  intensifies  like  a  glass  held  upon  a  distant 
snowpeak,  is  one  of  the  best. 

But  there  is  another  service  that  poetry,  among  all 
writing,  best  renders  to  the  general  reader,  when  he 
needs  it;  a  service  less  obvious,  but  sometimes,  I  think, 
more  important.  Poetry  insures  an  extension  of  youth. 

Men  and  women  vary  in  their  emotional  susceptibil 
ity.  Some  go  through  life  always  clouded,  always  dull, 
like  a  piece  of  glass  cut  in  semblance  of  a  gem,  that 
refracts  no  colors  and  is  empty  of  light.  Others  are 
vivid,  impressionable,  reacting  to  every  experience. 
Some  of  us  are  most  aroused  by  contact  with  one  an 
other.  Interest  awakens  at  the  sound  of  a  voice;  we 


234  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

are  most  alive  when  most  with  our  kind.  Others,  like 
Thoreau,  respond  best  in  solitude.  The  veery  thrush 
singing  dimly  in  the  hemlocks  at  twilight  moves  them 
more  powerfully  than  a  cheer.  A  deep  meadow  awave 
with  headed  grass,  a  solemn  hill  shouldering  the  sky, 
a  clear  blue  air  washing  over  the  pasture  slopes  and 
down  among  the  tree-tops  of  the  valley,  thrills  them 
more  than  all  the  men  in  all  the  streets  of  the  world. 
It  makes  no  difference.  To  every  one,  dull  and  vivid, 
social  and  solitary,  age  brings  its  changes.  We  may 
understand  better,  but  the  vividness  is  less,  the  emo 
tions  are  tamer.  They  do  not  fully  respond,  as  th£ 
bell  in  the  deserted  house  only  half  tinkles  to  our  pull 
ing. 

Si  jeunesse  savait, 
Si  vielliesse  pouvait. 

But  to  be  able  comes  before  to  know.  We  must 
react  to  experiences  before  it  is  worth  while  to  com 
prehend  them.  And  after  one  is  well  enmeshed  in 
the  routine  of  plodding  life,  after  the  freshness  of  the 
emotions  (and  this  is  a  definition  of  youth)  is  gone, 
it  is  difficult  to  react.  I  can  travel  now,  if  I  wish, 
to  the  coral  islands  or  the  Spanish  Main,  but  it  is  too 
late. 

Few  willingly  part  with  the  fresh  impressionability 
of  youth.  Sometimes,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  the 
faculties  of  sensation  become  atrophied,  if  indeed  they 
ever  existed.  I  know  no  more  dismal  spectacle  than 
a  man  talking  shop  on  a  moonlit  hill  in  August,  a 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetlcal  23$ 

woman  gossipping  by  the  rail  of  a  steamer  plunging 
through  the  sapphire  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  or  a  couple 
perusing  advertisements  throughout  a  Beethoven  sym 
phony.  I  will  not  advance  as  typical  a  drummer  I 
once  saw  read  a  cheap  magazine  from  cover  to  cover 
in  the  finest  stretch  of  the  Canadian  Rockies.  He 
was  not  a  man,  but  a  sample-fed,  word-emitting  ma 
chine.  These  people,  emotionally  speaking,  are  senile. 
They  should  not  try  to  read  poetry. 

But  most  of  us — even  those  who  are  outwardly  com 
monplace,  practical,  unenthusiastic,  "solid,"  and  not 
"sensitive" — lose  our  youthful  keenness  with  regret. 
And  that  is  why  poetry,  except  for  the  hopelessly  sod 
den,  is  a  tonic  worthy  of  a  great  price.  For  the  right 
poetry  at  the  right  time  has  the  indubitable  power  to 
stir  the  emotions  that  experience  is  no  longer  able  to 
arouse.  I  cannot  give  satisfactory  instances,  for  the 
reaction  is  highly  personal.  What  with  me  stirs  a 
brain  cell  long  dormant  to  action  will  leave  another 
unmoved,  and  vice  versa.  However,  to  make  clear  my 
meaning,  let  us  take  Romance,  the  kind  that  one  capi 
talizes,  that  belongs  to  Youth,  also  capitalized,  and 
dwells  in  Granada  or  Sicily  or  the  Spanish  Main.  The 
middle-aged  gentleman  on  a  winter  cruise  for  his 
jaded  nerves  cannot  expect  a  thrill  from  sights  alone. 
If  it  is  not  lost  for  him  utterly,  it  is  only  because  Keats 
has  kept  it,  in — 

.  .  .  Magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn, 


236  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

and  Nashe  in — 

Brightness  falls  from  the  air ; 
Queens  have  died  young  and  fair. 

Or  consider  the  joy  of  travel  renewed  in  Kipling's — 

Then  home,  get  her  home,  where  the  drunken  rollers  comb, 

And  the  shouting  seas  drive  by, 

And  the  engines  stamp  and  ring,  and  the  wet  bows  reel  and 
swing, 

And  the  Southern  Cross  rides  high! 
Yes,  the  old  lost  stars  wheel  back,  dear  lass, 

That  blaze  in  the  velvet  blue. 

Or  the  multitudinous  experiences  of  vivid  life  that 
crowd  the  pages  of  men  like  Shakespeare,  or  Chaucer, 
who  thanked  God  that  he  had  known  his  world  as  in 
his  time.  Even  in  these  shopworn  quotations  the  power 
still  remains. 

Somewhere  in  poetry,  and  best  in  poetry  because 
there  most  concentrated  and  most  penetrative,  lies  crys 
tallized  experience  at  hand  for  all  who  need  it.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  find,  although  no  one  can  find  it  for 
you.  It  is  not  necessarily  exalted,  romantic,  passion 
ate;  it  may  be  comfortable,  homely,  gentle  or  hearty, 
vigorous  and  cheerful;  it  may  be  anything  but  common 
place,  for  no  true  emotion  is  ever  commonplace.  I 
have  known  men  of  one  poet;  and  yet  that  poet  gave 
them  the  satisfaction  they  required.  I  know  others 
whose  occasional  dip  into  poetry  leads  to  no  rapture  of 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetical  237 

beauty,  no  throbbing  vision  into  eternity;  and  yet  with 
out  poetry  they  would  be  less  alive,  their  minds  would 
be  less  young.  As  children,  most  of  us  would  have 
flushed  before  the  beauty  of  a  sunrise  on  a  tropic  ocean, 
felt  dimly  if  profoundly — and  forgotteru  The  poet — 
like  the  painter — has  caught,  has  interpreted,  has  pre 
served  the  experience,  so  that,  like  music,  it  may  be 
renewed.  And  he  can  perform  that  miracle  for  greater 
things  than  sunrises.  This,  perhaps,  is  the  best  of 
all  reasons  why  every  one  except  the  emotionally  senile 
should  sometimes  read  poetry. 

I  know  at  least  one  honest  Philistine  who,  unlike 
many  Philistines,  has  traveled  through  the  Promised 
Land — and  does  not  like  it.  When  his  emotional 
friends  talk  sentimentalism  and  call  it  literature,  or 
his  esthetic  acquaintances  erect  affectations  and  call 
them  art,  he  has  the  proper  word  of  irony  that  brings 
them  back  to  food,  money,  and  other  verities.  His 
voice  haunts  me  now,  suggesting  that,  in  spite  of  the 
reasons  I  have  advanced,  the  general  reader  can 
scarcely  be  expected  to  read  modern  poetry,  and  that 
therefore  his  habit  of  skipping  must  continue.  He 
would  say  that  most  modern  poetry  is  unreadable,  at 
least  by  the  average  man.  He  would  say  that  if  the 
infinitely  complex  study  of  emotional  mind-states  that 
lies  behind  the  poetry  of  Edwin  Arlington  Robinson, 
or  the  eerie  otherworldliness  of  Yeats,  or  the  harsh 
virility  of  Sandburg  is  to  be  regarded  as  an  intensifica 
tion  and  clarification  of  experience,  he  begs  to  be  ex 
cused.  He  would  say  that  if  the  lyrics  of  subtle  and 


238  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

passionate  emotion  and  the  drab  stories  of  sex  experi 
ence  that  make  up  so  many  pages  of  modern  anthol 
ogies  represent  a  renewal  and  extension  of  youth,  it 
was  not  his  youth.  He  prefers  to  be  sanely  old  rather 
than  erotically  young.  He  will  stick  to  the  daily  paper 
and  flat  prose. 

Well,  it  is  easy  to  answer  him  by  ruling  out  modern 
poetry  from  the  argument.  There  was  more  good 
poetry,  neither  complex,  nor  erotic,  nor  esoteric,  written 
before  our  generation  than  even  a  maker  of  anthologies 
is  likely  to  read.  But  I  am  not  willing  to  dodge  the 
issue  so  readily.  There  is  modern  poetry  for  every 
reader  who  is  competent  to  read  poetry  at  all.  If  there 
is  none  too  much  of  it,  that  is  his  own  fault.  If  there 
is  much  that  makes  no  appeal  to  him,  that  is  as  it 
should  be. 

It  is  true  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  contemporary 
poetry  is  well-nigh  unintelligible  to  the  gentleman 
whose  reading,  like  his  experience,  does  not  often  ven 
ture  beyond  the  primitive  emotions.  Why  should  it 
not  be?  The  modern  lyric  is  untroubled  by  the  social 
conscience.  It  is  highly  individual,  for  it  is  written 
by  men  of  intense  individuality  for  readers  whose  im 
aginations  require  an  intimate  appeal.  Such  minds  de 
mand  poetry  prevailingly,  just  as  the  average  reader 
demands  prose  prevailingly.  They  profit  by  prose  now 
and  then,  just  as,  occasionally,  he  profits  by  poetry. 
We  talk  so  much  of  the  enormous  growth  of  the  mass 
of  average  readers  in  recent  years  that  we  forget  the 
corresponding  growth  in  the  number  of  individualities 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetical  239 

that  are  not  average.  Much  modern  poetry  is  written 
for  such  readers,  for  men  and  women  whose  minds 
are  sensitive  to  intricate  emotional  experience,  who  can 
and  do  respond  to  otherworldliness,  to  the  subtly  ro 
mantic,  the  finely  esthetic,  and  the  intricately  ideal. 
They  deserve  whatever  poetry  they  may  desire. 

The  important  point  to  note  is  that  they  do  not  get 
it.  It  is  they— far  more  than  the  Philistines— who 
complain  that  modern  poetry  is  insufficient  for  their 
needs.  The  highly  personal  lyric  is  probably  more 
perfected,  more  abundant,  and  more  poignant  in  its 
appeal  to  living  minds  now  than  ever  before  in  the 
history  of  our  civilization.  But  it  occupies  only  one 
province  of  poetry.  A  lover  of  poetry  desires,  far  more 
keenly  than  the  general  reader,  to  have  verse  of  his 
own  day  that  is  more  Shakespearian,  more  Miltonic, 
more  Sophoclean  than  this.  He  wants  poetry  that  lifts 
spacious  times  into  spacious  verse,  poetry  that  "en- 
lumynes,"  like  Petrarch's  "rhetorike  sweete,"  a  race 
and  a  civilization.  He  desires,  in  addition  to  what  he 
is  already  getting,  precisely  that  poetry  so  universal 
in  its  subject-matter  and  Its  appeal,  which  the  general 
reader  thinks  he  would  read  if  he  found  it  instead  of 
"lyrical  subtleties"  in  his  pages. 

Well,  they  do  not  get  it  very  abundantly  to-day,  let 
us  admit  the  fact  freely.  But  the  fault  is  not  altogether 
the  poets'.  The  fault  is  in  the  intractable  mediocrity 
of  the  age,  which  resists  transference  into  poetry  as 
stiff  clay  resists  the  hoe  of  the  cultivator.  The  fault 
lies  in  the  general  reader  himself,  whose  very  opposi- 


240  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

tion  to  poetry  because  it  is  poetry  makes  him  a  difficult 
person  to  write  for.  Commercialized  minds,  given  over 
to  convention,  denying  their  sentiment  and  idealism, 
or  wasting  them  upon  cheap  and  meretricious  litera 
ture,  do  not  make  a  good  audience.  Our  few  poets  in 
English  who  have  possessed  some  universality  of  ap 
peal  have  had  to  make  concessions.  Kipling  has  been 
the  most  popular  among  good  English  poets  in  our 
time?  but  he  has  had  to  put  journalism  into  much  of 
his  poetry  in  order  to  succeed.  And  Kipling  is  not 
read  so  much  as  a  certain  American  writer  who  dis 
covered  that  by  writing  verse  in  prose  form  he  could 
make  the  public  forget  their  prejudice  against  poetry 
and  indulge  their  natural  pleasure  in  rhythm  and  rime. 
A  striking  proof  of  all  that  I  have  been  writing  is 
to  be  found  in  so-called  magazine  verse.  Sneers  at 
magazine  poetry  are  unjust  because  they  are  unintelli 
gent.  It  is  quite  true  that  most  of  it  consists  of  the 
highly  individualistic  lyric  of  which  I  have  spoken 
above.  But  in  comparison  with  the  imaginative  prose 
of  the  typical  popular  magazine,  it  presents  a  most  in 
structive  contrast.  The  prose  is  too  frequently  sensa 
tional  or  sentimental,  vulgar  or  smart.  The  verse,  even 
though  narrow  in  its  appeal,  and  sometimes  slight,  is 
at  least  excellent  in  art,  admirable  in  execution,  and 
vigorous  and  unsentimental  in  tone.  Regarded  as  lit 
erature,  it  is  very  much  more  satisfactory  than  the  bulk 
of  magazine  prose.  Indeed,  there  is  less  difference 
between  the  best  and  the  worst  of  our  magazines  than 
between  the  verse  and  the  prose  in  any  one  of  them. 


Poetry  for  the  Unpoetical  241 

And  if  this  verse  is  too  special  in  its  subject-matter 
to  be  altogether  satisfactory,  if  so  little  of  it  appeals 
to  the  general  reader,  is  it  not  his  fault?  He  neglects 
the  poetry  from  habit  rather  than  from  conviction 
based  on  experience.  Because  he  skips  it,  and  has 
skipped  it  until  habit  has  become  a  convention,  much 
of  it  has  become  by  natural  adaptation  of  supply  to 
demand  too  literary,  too  narrow,  too  subtle  and  com 
plex  for  him  now.  The  vicious  circle  is  complete. 

This  circle  may  soon  be  broken.  A  ferment,  which 
in  the  'nineties  stirred  in  journalism,  and  a  decade  later 
transformed  our  drama,  is  working  now  in  verse.  The 
poetical  revival  now  upon  us  may  be  richer  so  far  in 
promise  than  in  great  poetry,  but  it  is  very  significant. 
For  one  thing,  it  is  advertising  poetry,  and  since  poetry 
is  precisely  what  Shakespeare  called  it,  caviare  to  the 
general — a  special  commodity  for  occasional  use — a 
little  advertising  will  be  good  for  it.  Again,  the  verse 
that  has  sprung  from  the  movement  is  much  of  it 
thoroughly  interesting.  Some  of  it  is  as  bizarre  as 
the  new  art  of  the  futurists  and  the  vorticists;  some 
is  merely  vulgar,  some  merely  affected,  some  hopelessly 
obscure;  but  other  poems,  without  convincing  us  of 
their  greatness,  seem  as  original  and  creative  as  were 
Browning  and  Whitman  in  their  day.  Probably,  like 
the  new  painting,  the  movement  is  more  significant  than 
the  movers. 

Nevertheless,  if  one  is  willing  to  put  aside  prejudice, 
suspend  judgment,  and  look  ahead,  vers  libre,  even 
when  more  libre  than  vers,  is  full  of  meaning — poetic 


242  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

realism,  even  when  more  real  than  poetry,  charged  with 
possibility.  For  with  all  its  imperfections  much  of 
this  new  poetry  is  trying  to  mean  more  than  ever  be 
fore  to  the  general  reader.  I  am  not  sure  that  the 
democracy  can  be  interpreted  for  him  in  noble  poetry 
and  remain  the  democracy  he  knows.  And  yet  I  think, 
and  I  believe,  that,  in  his  sub-consciousness  at  least,  he 
feels  an  intense  longing  to  find  the  everyday  life  in 
which  we  all  live — so  thrilling  beneath  the  surface — 
interpreted,  swung  into  that  rhythmic  significance  that 
will  make  it  part  of  the  vast  and  flowing  stream  of  all 
life.  I  can  tolerate  many  short,  rough  words  in  poetry, 
and  much  that  we  have  been  accustomed  to  regard 
as  prose,  on  the  way  to  such  a  goal. 

For  I  honestly  believe  that  it  is  better  to  read  fan 
tastic  poetry,  coarse  poetry,  prosaic  poetry — anything 
but  vulgar  and  sentimental  poetry — than  no  poetry 
at  all.  To  be  susceptible  to  no  revival  of  the  vivid 
emotions  of  youth,  to  be  touched  by  no  thoughts  more 
intense  than  our  own,  to  be  accessible  to  no  imaginative 
interpretation  of  the  life  we  lead — this  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  heavy  misfortune.  But  to  possess,  as  most 
of  us  do,  our  share  of  all  these  qualities,  and  then  at 
no  time,  in  no  fitting  mood  or  proffered  opportunity, 
to  read  poetry — this  can  only  be  regarded  as  deafness 
by  habit  and  blindness  from  choice. 


Eye,  Ear,  and  Mind 

OUR  eyes  are  more  civilized  than  our  ears,  and  much 
more  civilized  than  our  minds;  that  is  the  flat  truth, 
and  it  accounts  for  a  good  deal  that  puzzles  worthy 
people  who  wish  to  reform  literature. 

Consider  the  musical  comedy  of  the  kind  that  runs 
for  a  year  and  costs  the  price  of  two  books  for  a  good 
seat.  Its  humor  is  either  good  horseplay  or  vulgar 
farce,  and  its  literary  quality  nil.  Its  music  is  better, 
less  banal  than  the  words,  and,  sometimes,  almost  ex 
cellent.  But  its  setting,  the  costumes,  the  scenic  effects, 
the  stage  painting,  and,  most  of  all,  the  color  schemes 
are  always  artistic  and  sometimes  exquisite.  They 
intrigue  the  most  sophisticated  taste,  which  is  not  sur 
prising;  yet,  at  the  same  time,  the  multitude  likes  them, 
pays  for  them,  stays  away  if  they  are  not  right.  Eye  is 
an  esthete,  ear  is,  at  least,  cultivated,  mind  is  a  gross 
barbarian,  unwilling  to  think,  and  desirous  only  of  a 
tickle  or  a  prod. 

Or  to  localize  the  scene  and  change  the  angle  a  trifle, 
compare  the  New  York  ear  for  music  with  the  New 
York  taste  for  reading.  The  audiences  who  hear 
good  concerts,  good  operas,  good  oratorios,  and  thor 
oughly  appreciate  them,  far  outrun  in  number  the  read 
ers  of  equally  artistic  or  intellectual  books.  Ear  is 

243 


244  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

more  cultivated  than  mind,  musical  appreciation  keener 
than  literary  taste.  A  good  stage  set  on  a  first  night 
in  this  same  metropolis  of  the  arts,  will  get  a  round  of 
applause,  when  not  only  often,  but  usually,  perfection 
of  lines,  or  poignancy  of  thought  in  the  dialogue,  will 
miss  praise  altogether.  Eye  detects  sheer  beauty  in 
stantly,  mind  lags  or  is  dull  to  it. 

This  is  a  fact;  the  cause  of  it  let  psychologists  ex 
plain,  as  they  can,  of  course,  very  readily.  It  is  a 
rather  encouraging  fact,  for  it  seems  to  indicate  that 
our  members  educate  themselves  one  at  a  time,  and  yet, 
as  parts  of  a  single  body  corporate,  must  help  each 
other's  education.  If  we  grow  critical  of  the  sped-up 
background  of  a  movie  scene,  we  may  grow  critical  of 
its  sped-up  plot.  Eye  may  teach  the  ear,  ear  lift  the 
mind  to  more  strenuous  intellectual  efforts. 

And,  of  course,  it  explains  why  the  literary  reformers 
have  such  difficulties  with  the  multitude.  Why,  they 
say,  do  these  women,  whose  dress  is  admirably  de 
signed  and  colored,  whose  living  rooms  are  propor 
tioned  and  furnished  in  taste,  who  know  good  music 
from  bad,  and  enjoy  the  former — why  do  they  read 
novels  without  the  least  distinction,  without  beauty 
or  truth,  barely  raised  above  vulgarity?  Why,  they 
say,  does  this  man  who  cooperates  with  his  architect 
in  the  building  of  a  country  house  which  would  have 
been  a  credit  to  any  period,  who  is  a  connoisseur  in 
wine  and  cigars,  and  unerring  in  his  judgment  of  pic 
tures,  why  does  he  definitely  prefer  the  commonplace 
in  literature?  Eye,  ear,  and  tongue  are  civilized;  in- 


Eye,  Ear,  and  Mind  245 

tellect  remains  a  gross  feeder  still.  Good  reading  comes 
last  among  the  arts  of  taste. 

This  is  not  an  essay  in  reform;  it  is  content  to  be 
a  question  mark;  but  one  bit  of  preaching  may  slip 
in  at  the  end.  Why  give  eye  and  ear  all  the  fine  ex 
periences?  Why  not  do  something  for  poor,  slovenly 
mind?  The  truth  is  that  we  are  lazy.  In  a  stage  full 
of  shimmering  beauty,  in  a  concert  of  chamber  music, 
in  a  fine  building,  or  an  admirable  sketch,  others  do 
the  work,  we  have  only  to  gaze  or  listen  in  order  to 
pluck  some,  at  least,  of  the  fruits  of  art.  But  fine 
novels  take  fine  reading;  fine  essays  take  fine  thinking; 
fine  poetry  takes  fine  feeling.  We  balk  at  the  effort, 
and  ask,  like  the  audience  at  the  movies,  that  eye 
should  take  the  easier  way.  And  hence  the  American 
reader  still  faintly  suggests  the  Fiji  Islander,  who  wears 
a  silk  hat  and  patent  leathers  on  a  tattooed  naked  body. 

For  all  we  can  tell,  that  may  be  the  direction  of 
Progress.  In  2021  New  Yorkers  may  be  gazing  at  a 
city  beautiful,  where  even  the  subways  give  forth  sweet 
sounds;  and  reading  novelized  movies  in  words  of  one 
syllable.  Eye  may  win  the  race  and  starve  out  the 
other  members.  It  would  be  a  bad  future  for  pub 
lishers  and  authors;  and  I  am  against  it,  even  as  a  pos 
sibility.  Hence  my  energies  will  be  devoted  to  poking, 
thrilling,  energizing,  tonicking  that  lazy  old  organism, 
half  asleep  still — Mind. 


Out  with  the  Dilettante 

A  FEW  years  ago  drums  and  trumpets  in  American 
magazines  and  publishers'  advertisements  announced 
that  the  essay  was  coming  to  its  own  again.  We  were 
to  vary  our  diet  of  short  stories  with  pleasing  disqui 
sitions,  to  find  in  books  of  essays  a  substitute  for  the 
volume  of  sermons  grown  obsolete,  and  to  titillate 
our  finer  senses  by  graceful  prose  that  should  teach 
us  without  didacticism,  and  present  contemporary  life 
without  the  incumbrance  of  a  plot. 

The  promise  was  welcome.  American  literature  has 
been  at  its  very  best  in  the  essay.  In  the  essay,  with 
few  exceptions,  it  has  more  often  than  elsewhere 
attained  world-wide  estimation.  Emerson,  Thoreau, 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  were  primarily  essayists.  Haw 
thorne  and  Irving  were  essayists  as  much  as  romancers. 
Franklin  was  a  common  sense  essayist.  Jonathan  Ed 
wards  will  some  day  be  presented  (by  excerpt)  as  a 
moral  essayist  of  a  high  order.  And  there  was  Lowell. 

Have  they  had  worthy  successors?  In  the  years 
after  the  Civil  War  certainly  none  of  equal  eminence. 
But  it  is  too  early  to  say  that  the  trumpets  and  drums 
of  the  last  decade  were  false  heralds.  The  brilliant 
epithets  of  Chesterton,  the  perfect  sophistication  of 
Pearsall  Smith  (an  American,  but  expatriated),  the 
placid  depth  of  Hudson's  nature  studies,  are  not  paral- 

246 


Out  with  the  Dilettante  247 

leled  on  this  side  of  the  water,  yet  with  Crothers, 
Gerould,  Repplier,  Colby,  Morley,  Strunsky,  we  need 
not  fear  comparison  in  the  critical  genre,  unless  it  be 
with  the  incomparable  Max  Beerbohm. 

Two  kinds  of  expository  writing  are  natural  for 
Americans.  The  first  is  a  hard-hitting  statement, 
straight  out  of  intense  feeling  or  labored  thought.  That 
was  Emerson's  way  (in  spite  of  his  expansiveness), 
and  Thoreau's  also.  You  read  them  by  pithy  sentences, 
not  paragraphs.  They  assail  you  by  ideas,  not  by  in 
sidious  structures  of  thought.  The  second  is  an  easy 
going  comment  on  life,  often  slangy  or  colloquial  and 
frequently  so  undignified  as  not  to  seem  literature. 
Mark  Twain  and  Josh  Billings  wrote  that  way;  Ring 
Lardner  writes  so  to-day. 

When  the  straight-from-the-shoulder  American  takes 
time  to  finish  his  thought,  to  mold  his  sentences,  to 
brain  his  reader  with  a  perfect  expression  of  his  tense 
emotion,  then  he  makes  literature.  And  when  the  easy 
going  humorist,  often  nowadays  a  column  conductor, 
or  a  contributor  to  The  Saturday  Evening  Post,  takes 
time  to  deepen  his  observation  and  to  say  it  with  real 
words  instead  of  worn  symbols,  he  makes,  and  does 
make,  literature.  More  are  doing  it  than  the  skeptical 
realize.  The  new  epoch  of  the  American  essay  is  well 
under  way. 

But  the  desire  to  "make  literature"  in  America  is 
too  often  wasted.  The  would-be  essayist  wastes  it  in 
pretty  writing  about  trivial  things — neighbors'  back 
yards,  books  I  have  read,  the  idiosyncrasies  of  cats, 


248  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

humors  of  the  streets — the  sort  of  dilettantish  comment 
that  older  nations  writing  of  more  settled,  richer  civili 
zations  can  do  well — that  Anatole  France  and  occa 
sional  essayists  of  Punch  or  The  Spectator  can  do  well 
and  most  of  us  do  indifferently.  We  are  a  humorous 
people,  but  not  a  playful  one.  Light  irony  is  not  our 
forte.  Strength  and  humorous  exaggeration  come  more 
readily  to  our  pens  than  grace.  We  are  better  inspired 
by  the  follies  of  the  crowd,  or  the  errors  of  humanity, 
than  by  the  whims  of  culture  or  aspects  of  pleasant 
leisure.  And  when  we  try  to  put  on  style  in  the  manner 
of  Lamb  or  Hazlitt,  Stevenson  or  Beerbohm,  we  seldom 
exceed  the  second  rate. 

When  the  newspaper  and  magazine  humorists  of 
democracy  learn  to  write  better;  when  the  moralists 
and  reformers  and  critics  of  American  life  learn  to 
mature  and  perfect  their  thought  until  what  they  write 
is  as  good  as  their  intentions — then  the  trumpets  and 
drums  may  sound  again,  and  with  justification.  Many 
have;  may  others  follow. 

And  perhaps  then  we  can  scrap  a  mass  of  fine  writing 
about  nothing  in  particular,  that  calls  itself  the  Ameri 
can  literary  essay,  and  yet  is  neither  American  in  in 
spiration,  native  in  style,  nor  good  for  anything  what 
soever,  except  exercise  in  words.  Out  with  the  dilet 
tantes.  We  are  tired  of  the  merely  literary;  we  want 
real  literature  in  the  essay  as  elsewhere. 


Flat  Prose 

SOME  time  ago  a  writer  protested  against  the  taboo 
on  "beautiful  prose."  He  asserted  that  the  usual  or 
gans  of  publication,  especially  in  America,  reject  with 
deadly  certainty  all  contributions  whose  style  suggests 
that  melodious  rhythm  which  De  Quincey  and  Ruskin 
made  fashionable  for  their  generations,  and  Stevenson 
revived  in  the  'nineties.  He  complained  that  the  writer 
is  no  longer  allowed  to  write  as  well  as  he  can;  that 
he  must  abstract  all  unnecessary  color  of  phrase,  all 
warmth  of  connotation  and  grace  of  rhythm  from  his 
style,  lest  he  should  seem  to  be  striving  for  "atmos 
phere,"  instead  of  going  about  his  proper  business, 
which  is  to  fill  the  greedy  stomach  of  the  public  with 
facts. 

Unfortunately,  this  timely  fighter  in  a  good  cause 
was  too  enamored  of  the  art  whose  suppression  he  was 
bewailing.  He  so  far  forgot  himself  as  to  make  his 
own  style  "beautiful"  in  the  old-time  fashion,  and  thus 
must  have  roused  the  prejudice  of  the  multitude,  who 
had  to  study  such  style  in  college,  and  knew  from  sad 
experience  that  it  takes  longer  to  read  than  the  other 
kind. 

But  there  are  other  and  safer  ways  of  combating 
the  taste  for  flat  prose.  One  might  be  to  print  parallel 
columns  of  "newspaper  English"  (which  they  threaten 

249 


250  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

now  to  teach  in  the  schools)  until  the  eye  sickened  of 
its  deadly  monotony.  This  is  a  bad  way.  The  average 
reader  would  not  see  the  point.  Paragraphs  from  a 
dozen  American  papers,  all  couched  in  the  same  utili 
tarian  dialect, — simple  but  not  always  clear,  concise 
yet  seldom  accurate,  emphatic  but  as  ugly  as  the  clank 
of  an  automobile  chain, — why,  we  read  thousands  of 
such  lines  daily!  We  think  in  such  English;  we  talk 
in  it;  to  revolt  from  this  style,  to  which  the  Associated 
Press  has  given  the  largest  circulation  on  record,  would 
be  like  protesting  against  the  nitrogen  in  our  air. 

Books  and  magazines  require  a  different  reckoning. 
The  author  is  still  allowed  to  let  himself  go  occasionally 
in  books — especially  in  sentimental  books.  But  the 
magazines,  with  few  exceptions,  have  shut  down  the  lid, 
and  are  keeping  the  stylistic  afflatus  under  strict  com 
pression.  No  use  to  show  them  what  they  might  pub 
lish  if,  with  due  exclusion  of  the  merely  pretty,  the 
sing-song,  and  the  weakly  ornate,  they  were  willing  to 
let  a  little  style  escape.  With  complete  cowardice,  they 
will  turn  the  general  into  the  particular,  and  insist 
that  in  any  case  they  will  not  publish  you.  Far  better, 
it  seems  to  me,  to  warn  editors  and  the  "practical  pub 
lic"  as  to  what  apparently  is  going  to  happen  if  ambi 
tious  authors  are  tied  down  much  longer  to  flat  prose. 
t  It  is  not  generally  known,  I  believe,  that  post-im 
pressionism  has  escaped  from  the  field  of  pictorial  art, 
and  is  running  rampant  in  literature.  At  present,  Miss 
Gertrude  Stein  is  the  chief  culprit.  Indeed,  she  may 
be  called  the  founder  of  a  coterie,  if  not  of  a  school. 


Flat  Prose  251 

Her  art  has  been  denned  recently  by  one  of  her 
admirers,  who  is  also  the  subject,  or  victim,  of  the 
word-portrait  from  which  I  intend  later  to  quote  in 
illustration  of  my  argument.  "Gertrude  Stein,"  says 
Miss  Dodge,  "is  doing  with  words  what  Picasso  is  do 
ing  with  paint.  She  is  impelling  language  to  induce 
new  states  of  consciousness,  and  in  doing  so  language 
becomes  with  her  a  creative  art  rather  than  a  mirror 
of  history."  This,  being  written  in  psychological  and 
not  in  post-impressionist  English,  is  fairly  intelligible. 
But  it  does  not  touch  the  root  of  the  matter.  Miss 
Stein,  the  writer  continues,  uses  "words  that  appeal  to 
her  as  having  the  meaning  they  seem  to  have  [that  is, 
if  "diuturnity"  suggests  a  tumble  downstairs,  it  means 
a  tumble  downstairs] .  To  present  her  impressions  she 
chooses  words  for  their  inherent  quality  rather  than 
their  accepted  meaning." 

Let  us  watch  the  creative  artist  at  her  toil.  The 
title  of  this  particular  word-picture  is  "Portrait  of 
Mabel  Dodge  at  the  Villa  Curonia."  As  the  portrait 
itself  has  a  beginning,  but  no  middle,  and  only  a  faintly 
indicated  end,  I  believe — though  in  my  ignorance  of  just 
what  it  all  means  I  am  not  sure — that  I  can  quote  at 
random  without  offense  to  the  impressions  derivable 
from  the  text. 

Here  then  are  a  few  paragraphs  where  the  inherent 
quality  of  the  words  is  said  to  induce  new  states  of 
consciousness: — 

"Bargaining  is  something  and  there  is  not  that  suc 
cess.  The  intention  is  what  if  application  has  that 


252  Philistines  and  Dilettante 

accident  results  are  reappearing.  They  did  not  darken. 
That  was  not  an  adulteration.  .  .  .  There  is  that  par 
ticular  half  of  directing  that  there  is  that  particular 
whole  direction  that  is  not  all  the  measure  of  any  com 
bination.  Gliding  is  not  heavily  moving.  Looking  is 
not  vanishing.  Laughing  is  not  evaporation. 

"Praying  has  intention  and  relieving  that  situation 
is  not  solemn.  There  comes  that  way. 

"There  is  all  there  is  when  there  has  all  there  has 
where  there  is  what  there  is.  That  is  what  is  done 
when  there  is  done  what  is  done  and  the  union  is  won 
and  the  division  is  the  explicit  visit.  There  is  not  all 
of  any  visit." 

After  a  hundred  lines  of  this  I  wish  to  scream,  I 
wish  to  burn  the  book,  I  am  in  agony.  It  is  not  be 
cause  I  know  that  words  cannot  be  torn  loose  from 
their  meanings  without  insulting  the  intellect.  It  is 
not  because  I  see  that  this  is  a  prime  example  of  the 
"confusion  of  the  arts."  No,  my  feeling  is  purely  phys 
ical.  Some  one  has  applied  an  egg-beater  to  my  brain. 

But  having  calmed  myself  by  a  sedative  of  flat  prose 
from  the  paper,  I  realize  that  Miss  Stein  is  more  sinned 
against  than  sinning.  She  is  merely  a  red  flag  waved 
by  the  Zeitgeist. 

For  this  is  the  sort  of  thing  we  are  bound  to  get  if 
the  lid  is  kept  down  on  the  stylists  much  longer.  Re 
pression  has  always  bred  revolt.  Revolt  breeds  ex 
travagance.  And  extravagance  leads  to  absurdity. 
And  yet  even  in  the  absurd,  a  sympathetic  observer 
may  detect  a  purpose  which  is  honest  and  right.  Miss 


Flat  Prose  253 

Stein  has  indubitably  written  nonsense,  but  she  began 
with  sense.  For  words  have  their  sound-values  as 
well  as  their  sense-values,  and  prose  rhythms  do  convey 
to  the  mind  emotions  that  mere  denotation  cannot  give. 
Rewrite  the  solemn  glory  of  Old  Testament  diction 
in  the  flat  colorless  prose  which  just  now  is  demanded, 
and  wonder  at  the  difference.  Translate  athe  multi 
tudinous  seas  incarnadine"  into  "making  the  ocean 
red," — or,  for  more  pertinent  instances,  imagine  a  Car- 
lyle,  an  Emerson,  a  Lamb  forced  to  exclude  from  his 
vocabulary  every  word  not  readily  understood  by  the 
multitude,  to  iron  out  all  whimseys,  all  melodies  from 
his  phrasing,  and  to  plunk  down  his  words  one  after 
the  other  in  the  order  of  elementary  thought! 

I  am  willing  to  fight  to  the  last  drop  of  ink  against 
any  attempt  to  bring  back  "fine  writing"  and  ornate 
rhetoric  into  prose.  "Expression  is  the  dress  of 
thought,"  and  plain  thinking  and  plain  facts  look  best 
in  simple  clothing.  Nevertheless,  if  we  must  write 
our  stories,  our  essays,  our  novels,  and  (who  knows) 
our  poems  in  the  flat  prose  of  the  news  column, — if  the 
editors  will  sit  on  the  lid, — well,  the  public  will  get 
what  it  pays  for,  but  sooner  or  later  the  spirit  of  style 
will  ferment,  will  work,  will  grow  violent  under  re 
straint.  There  will  be  reaction,  explosion,  revolution. 
The  public  will  get  its  flat  prose,  and — in  addition — not 
one,  but  a  hundred  Gertrude  Steins. 


VI 

Men  and  Their  Books 


Conrad  and  Melville 

THE  appearance  of  the  definitive  edition  of  Joseph 
Conrad,  with  his  interesting  critical  prefaces  included, 
was  a  provocation  to  read  and  reread  his  remarkable 
series  of  books,  the  most  remarkable  contribution  to 
English  literature  by  an  alien  since  the  language  began. 
But  is  it  a  reason  for  writing  more  of  an  author  already 
more  discussed  than  any  English  stylist  of  our  time? 
For  myself,  I  answer,  yes,  because  I  have  found  no  ade 
quate  definition  of  the  difference  between  Conrad  and 
us  to  whom  English  thinking  is  native,  nor  a  definition 
of  his  place,  historically  considered,  in  the  modern 
scheme;  no  definition,  that  is,  which  explains  my  own 
impressions  of  Conrad.  And  therefore  I  shall  proceed, 
as  all  readers  should,  to  make  my  own. 

If  you  ask  readers  why  they  like  Conrad,  two  out 
of  three  will  answer,  because  he  is  a  great  stylist,  or 
because  he  writes  of  the  sea.  I  doubt  the  worth  of 
such  answers.  Many  buy  books  because  they  are 
written  by  great  stylists,  but  few  read  for  just  that 
reason.  They  read  because  there  is  something  in  an 
author's  work  which  attracts  them  to  his  style,  and 
that  something  may  be  study  of  character,  skill  in  nar 
rative,  or  profundity  in  truth,  of  which  style  is  the 
perfect  expression,  but  not  the  thing  itself.  Only  con- 

257 


258  Men  and  Their  Books 

noisseurs,  and  few  of  them,  read  for  style.  And,  fur 
thermore,  I  very  much  doubt  whether  readers  go  to 
Conrad  to  learn  about  the  sea.  They  might  learn  as 
much  from  Cooper  or  Melville,  but  they  have  not  gone 
there  much  of  late.  And  many  an  ardent  lover  of 
Conrad  would  rather  be  whipped  than  go  from  New 
York  to  Liverpool  on  a  square-rigged  ship. 

In  any  case,  these  answers,  which  make  up  the  sum 
of  most  writing  about  Conrad,  do  not  define  him.  To 
say  that  an  author  is  a  stylist  is  about  as  helpful  as 
to  say  that  he  is  a  thinker.  And  Conrad  would  have 
had  his  reputation  if  he  had  migrated  to  Kansas  instead 
of  to  the  English  sea. 

Tn  point  of  fact,  much  may  be  said,  and  with  justice, 
against  Conrad's  style.  It  misses  occasionally  the  Eng 
lish  idiom,  and  sometimes  English  grammar,  which  is 
a  trivial  criticism.  It  offends  more  frequently  against 
the  literary  virtues  of  conciseness  and  economy,  which 
is  not  a  trivial  criticism.  Conrad,  like  the  writers  of 
Elizabethan  prose  (whom  he  resembles  in  ardency  and 
in  freshness),  too  often  wraps  you  in  words,  stupefies 
you  with  gorgeous  repetition,  goes  about  and  about  and 
about,  trailing  phrases  after  him,  while  the  procession 
of  narrative  images  halts.  He  can  be  as  prolix  in  his 
brooding  descriptions  as  Meredith  with  his  intellectual 
vaudeville.  Indeed,  many  give  him  lip  service  solely 
because  they  like  to  be  intoxicated,  to  be  carried  away, 
by  words.  A  slight  change  of  taste,  such  as  that  which 
has  come  about  since  Meredith  was  on  every  one's 
tongue,  will  make  such  defects  manifest.  Meredith  lives 


Conrad  and  Melville  259 

in  spite  of  his  prolixities,  and  so  will  Conrad,  but  neither 
because  they  are  perfect  English  stylists. 

I  am  sure  also  that  Conrad,  at  his  very  best,  is  not 
so  good  as  Melville,  at  his  best,  in  nauticaljaar ratiye ; 
as  Melville  in,  say,  the  first  day  of  the  final  chase 
of  Moby  Dick;  I  question  whether  he  is  as  good  in 
sea  narrative  as  Cooper  in  the  famous  passage  of  Paul 
Jones's  ship  through  the  shoals.  Such  comparisons  are, 
of  course,  rather  futile.  They  differentiate  among  ex 
cellences,  where  taste  is  a  factor.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
belittling  to  a  man  who,  above  almost  all  others  in  our 
language,  has  brooded  upon  the  mysteries  of  the  mind's 
action,  to  say  that  he  is  great  because  he  describes  so 
well  the  sea. 

We  must  seek  elsewhere  for  a  definition  of  the  pecul 
iar  qualities  of  Conrad.  And  without  a  definition  it  is 
easy  to  admire  but  hard  to  estimate  and  understand 
him. 

I  believe,  first  of  all,  that  Conrad  has  remained 
much  more  a  Slav  than  he,  or  any  of  us,  have  been 
willing  to  admit.  A  friend  of  mine,  married  to  a  Slav, 
told  me  of  her  husband,  how,  with  his  cab  at  the  door, 
and  dinner  waiting  somewhere,  he  would  sit  brooding 
(so  he  said)  over  the  wrongs  of  his  race.  It  is  danger 
ous  to  generalize  in  racial  characteristics,  but  no  one 
will  dispute  a  tendency  to  brood  as  a  characteristic 
of  the  Slav.  The  Russian  novels  are  full  of  characters 
who  brood,  and  of  brooding  upon  the  characters  and 
their  fates.  The  structure  of  the  Russian  story  is  deter 
mined  not  by  events  so  much  as  by  the  results  of  pas- 


260  Men  and  Their  Books 

sionate  brooding  upon  the  situation  in  which  the  imag 
ined  characters  find  themselves. 

So  it  is  with  Conrad,  always  and  everywhere.  In 
"Nostromo"  he  broods  upon  the  destructive  power  of 
a  fixed  idea;  in  "The  Rescue"  upon  the  result  of  fling 
ing  together  elemental  characters  of  the  kind  that  life 
keeps  separate;  in  "Youth"  upon  the  illusions,  more 
real  than  reality,  of  youth.  No  writer  of  our  race  had 
ever  the  patience  to  sit  like  an  Eastern  mystic  over 
his  scene,  letting  his  eye  fill  with  each  slightest  detail 
of  it,  feeling  its  contours  around  and  above  and  be 
neath,  separating  each  detail  of  wind  and  water,  mood 
and  emotion,  memory  and  hope,  and  returning  again 
and  again  to  the  task  of  description,  until  every  im 
pression  was  gathered,  every  strand  of  motive  threaded 
to  its  source. 

Henry  James,  you  will  say,  was  even  more  patient. 
Yes,  but  James  did  not  brood.  His  work  was  active 
analysis,  cutting  finer  and  finer  until  the  atom  was 
reached.  His  mind  was  Occidental.  He  wished  to 
know  why  the  wheels  went  round.  Conrad's,  in  this 
respect,  is  Oriental.  He  wants  to  see  what  things  essen 
tially  are.  Henry  James  refines  but  seldom  repeats. 
Conrad,  in  such  a  story  as  "Caspar  Ruiz"  for  example, 
or  in  "Chance,"  gives  the  impression  of  not  caring  to 
understand  if  only  he  can  fully  picture  the  mind  that 
his  brooding  imagination  draws  further  and  further 
from  its  sheath.  It  is  incredible,  to  one  who  has  not 
counted,  how  many  times  he  raises  the  same  situation 
to  the  light — the  Garibaldean  and  Nostromo,  Mrs. 


Conrad  and  Melville  261 

Travers  marveling  at  her  knowledge  of  Lingard's  heart 
—turns  it,  opens  it  a  little  further,  and  puts  it  back 
while  he  broods  on.  Here  is  the  explanation  of  Con 
rad's  prolixity;  here  the  reason  why  among  all  living 
novelists  he  is  least  a  slave  to  incident,  best  able  to 
let  his  story  grow  as  slowly  as  life,  and  still  hold  the 
reader's  interest.  As  we  read  Conrad  we  also  brood; 
we  read  slowly  where  elsewhere  we  read  fast.  Turns 
of  style,  felicities  of  description,  as  of  the  tropic  ocean, 
or  the  faces  of  women,  have  their  chance.  And,  of 
course,  the  excellence,  the  charm  of  Conrad's  style  is 
that  in  its  nuances,  its  slow  winding  paragraphs,  its 
pausing  sentences,  and  constant  suggestion  of  depths 
beyond  depths,  it  is  the  perfect  expression  of  the  brood 
ing  mind  that  grasps  its  meaning  by  the  repetition  of 
images  that  drop  like  pebbles,  now  here,  now  there, 
in  a  fathomless  pool. 

This  is  to  define  Conrad  in  space,  but  not  in  time. 
In  time,  he  may  be  Slav  or  English,  but  certainly  is 
modern  of  the  moderns.  The  tribute  of  admiration 
and  imitation  from  the  youth  of  his  own  period  alone 
might  prove  this.  But  it  is  easier  to  prove  than  to 
describe  his  modernity.  To  say  that  he  takes  the  imag 
ination  afield  into  the  margins  of  the  world,  where  life 
still  escapes  standardization  and  there  are  fresh  aspects 
of  beauty,  is  to  fail  to  differentiate  him  from  Kipling 
or  Masefield.  To  say  that  he  strikes  below  the  act 
and  the  will  into  realms  of  the  sub-conscious,  and 
studies  the  mechanism  as  well  as  the  results  of  emotion, 
is  but  to  place  him,  where  indeed  he  belongs,  among 


262  Men  and  Their  Books 

the  many  writers  who  have  learned  of  Henry  James  or 
moved  in  parallels  beside  him. 

To  get  a  better  perspective  of  Conrad's  essential 
modernity  I  should  like  to  propose  a  more  cogent  com 
parison,  and  a  more  illuminating  contrast,  with  a  man 
whose  achievements  were  in  Conrad's  own  province, 
who  challenges  and  rewards  comparison,  Herman  Mel 
ville. 

It  may  be  that  others  have  set  "Moby  Dick"  beside 
the  works  of  Conrad.  Some  one  must  have  done  it, 
,  so  illuminating  in  both  directions  is  the  result.  Here 
N/*>are  two  dreamers  who  write  of  the  sea  and  strange 
men,  of  the  wild  elements  and  the  mysterious  in  man; 
two  authors  who,  a  half  century  apart,  sail  the  same 
seas  and  come  home  to  write  not  so  much  of  them 
as  what  they  dream  when  they  remember  their  ex 
periences.  Each  man,  as  he  writes,  transcends  the  sea, 
sublimates  it  into  a  vapor  of  pure  imagination,  in  which 
he  clothes  his  idea  of  man,  and  so  doing  gives  us  not 
merely  great  literature,  but  sea  narrative  and  descrip 
tion  unsurpassed: 

And  thus,  through  the  serene  tranquillities  of  the  tropical 
seas,  among  waves  whose  hand-clappings  were  suspended  by 
exceeding  rapture,  Moby  Dick  moved  on,  still  withholding 
from  sight  the  full  terrors  of  his  submerged  trunk,  entirely 
hiding  the  wretched  hideousness  of  his  jaw. 

Melville,  writer  of  vivid  descriptions  of  the  South 
Seas,  "Typee,"  "Omoo,"  which  were  perfect  of  their 


Conrad  and  Melville  263 

kind,  but  still  only  superlative  travel  books,  distin 
guished  in  style  but  seldom  lifting  beyond  autobiog 
raphy,  began  another  reminiscent  narrative  in  "Moby 
Dick."  In  spite  of  his  profound  intellectual  growth 
away  from  the  cool  and  humorous  youth  who  paddled 
the  Marquesan  lake  with  primitive  beauties  beside  him,  \/ 
he  seems  to  have  meant  in  "The  White  Whale"  to  go 
back  to  his  earlier  manner,  to  write  an  accurate  though 
highly  personal  account  of  the  whaler's  life,  and  to 
that  end  had  assembled  a  mass  of  information  upon 
the  sperm  whale  to  add  to  his  own  memories.  Very 
literally  the  story  begins  as  an  autobiography;  even 
the  elemental  figure  of  the  cannibal,  Queequeg,  with 
his  incongruous  idol  and  harpoon  in  a  New  Bedford 
lodging  house,  does  not  warn  of  what  is  to  come.  But 
even  before  the  Pequod  leaves  sane  Nantucket  an  un 
dercurrent  begins  to  sweep  through  the  narrative. 
This  brooding  captain,  Ahab  (for  Melville  also  broods, 
though  with  characteristic  difference),  and  his  ivory 
leg,  those  warning  voices  in  the  mist,  the  strange  crew 
of  all  races  and  temperaments — the  civilized,  the  bar 
barous,  and  the  savage — in  their  ship,  which  is  a  micro 
cosm,  hints  that  creep  in  of  the  white  whale  whose 
nature  is  inimical  to  man  and  arouses  passions  deeper 
than  gain  or  revenge — all  this  prepares  the  reader  for 
something  more  than  incident.  From  the  mood  of 
Defoe  one  passes,  by  jerks  and  reversions,  to  the  at 
mosphere  of  "The  Ancient  Mariner"  and  of  "Man 
fred." 
When  Conrad  could  not  manage  his  story  he  laid 


264  Men  and  Their  Books 

it  aside,  sometimes  for  twenty  years,  as  with  "The 
Rescue."  But  Melville  was  a  wilder  soul,  a  greater 
man,  and  probably  a  greater  artist,  but  a  lesser  crafts 
man.  He  lost  control  of  his  book.  He  loaded  his 
whaling  story  with  casks  of  natural  history,  deck  loaded 
it  with  essays  on  the  moral  nature  of  man,  lashed  to 
its  sides  dramatic  dialogues  on  the  soul,  built  up  a 
superstructure  of  symbolism  and  allegory,  until  the 
tale  foundered  and  went  down,  like  the  Pequod.  And 
then  it  emerged  again  a  dream  ship  searching  for  a 
dream  whale,  manned  by  fantastic  and  terrible  dreams ; 
and  every  now  and  then,  as  dreams  will,  it  takes  on  an 
appearance  of  reality  more  vivid  than  anything  in  life, 
more  real  than  anything  in  Conrad — the  meeting  with 
the  Rachel  and  her  captain  seeking  his  drowned  son, 
the  rising  of  Moby  Dick  with  the  dead  Parsee  bound 
to  his  terrible  flank,  the  grim  dialogues  of  Ahab.  .  .  . 
In  this  bursting  of  bounds,  in  these  epic  grandeurs 
in  the  midst  of  confusion,  and  vivid  realities  mingled 
with  untrammeled  speculation,  lies  the  secret  of  Mel 
ville's  purpose,  and,  by  contrast,  the  explanation  of 
Conrad's  modern  effect  beside  him.  Melville,  friend 
of  Hawthorne  and  transcendentalist  philosopher  on  his 
own  account,  sees  nature  as  greater  and  more  terrible 
than  man.  He  sees  the  will  of  man  trying  to  control 
the  universe,  but  failing;  crushed  if  unco  wed  by  the 
unmeasured  power  of  an  evil  nature,  which  his  little 
spirit,  once  it  loses  touch  with  the  will  of  God,  vainly 
encounters.  Give  man  eyes  only  in  the  top  of  his  head, 
looking  heavenward,  says  Ahab,  urging  the  blacksmith, 


Conrad  and  Melville  265 

who  makes  him  a  new  leg  buckle,  to  forge  a  new 
creature  complete.  He  writes  of  man  at  the  beginning 
of  the  age  of  science,  aware  of  the  vast  powers  of 
material  nature,  fretting  that  his  own  body  is  part  of 
them,  desirous  to  control  them  by  mere  will,  fighting 
his  own  moral  nature  as  did  Ahab  in  his  insensate 
pursuit  of  Moby  Dick,  and  destroyed  by  his  own  am 
bitions,  even  as  Ahab,  the  Pequod,  and  all  her  crew 
went  down  before  the  lashings  and  charges  of  the 
white  whale. 

"Oh,  Life,"  says  Ahab,  "here  I  am,  proud  as  a  Greek 
god,  and  yet  standing  debtor  to  this  blockhead  [the 
carpenter]  for  a  bone  to  stand  on!  ...  I  owe  for  the 
flesh  in  the  tongue  I  brag  with."  And  yet  as  they 
approach  the  final  waters  "the  old  man's  purpose  in 
tensified  itself.  His  firm  lips  met  like  the  lips  of  a  vise; 
the  Delta  of  his  forehead's  veins  swelled  like  overladen 
brooks;  in  his  very  sleep  his  ringing  cry  ran  through 
the  vaulted  hull:  'Stern  all!  The  white  whale  spouts 
thick  blood!'" 

Conrad  comes  at  the  height  of  the  age  of  science. 
The  seas  for  him  are  full  of  dark  mysteries,  but  these 
mysteries  are  only  the  reflections  of  man.  Man  domi 
nates  the  earth  and  sea,  man  conquers  the  typhoon, 
intelligent  man  subdues  the  savage  wills  of  the  bar 
barians  of  the  shallows,  man  has  learned  to  master  all 
but  his  own  heart.  The  center  of  gravity  shifts  from 
without  to  within.  The  philosopher,  reasoning  of  God 
and  of  nature,  gives  place  to  the  psychologist  brood 
ing  over  an  organism  that  is  seat  of  God  and  master 


266  Men  and  Their  Books 

of  the  elements.  Melville  is  centrifugal,  Conrad  cen 
tripetal.  Melville's  theme  is  too  great  for  him;  it 
breaks  his  story,  but  the  fragments  are  magnificent. 
Conrad's  task  is  easier  because  it  is  more  limited;  his 
theme  is  always  in  control.  He  broods  over  man  in  a 
world  where  nature  has  been  conquered,  although  the 
mind  still  remains  inexplicable.  The  emphasis  shifts 
from  external  symbols  of  the  immensities  of  good  and 
evil  to  the  behavior  of  personality  under  stress.  Mel 
ville  is  a  moral  philosopher,  Conrad  a  speculative  psy 
chologist. 

The  essentially  modern  quality  of  Conrad  lies  in 
this  transference  of  wonder  from  nature  to  the  be 
havior  of  man,  the  modern  man  for  whom  lightning  is 
only  electricity  and  wind  the  relief  of  pressure  from 
hemisphere  to  hemisphere.  Mystery  lies  in  the  per 
sonality  now,  not  in  the  blind  forces  that  shape  and 
are  shaped  by  it.  It  is  the  difference,  in  a  sense,  be 
tween  Hawthorne,  who  saw  the  world  as  shadow  and 
illusion,  symbolizing  forces  inimical  to  humanity,  and 
Hardy,  who  sees  in  external  nature  the  grim  scientific 
fact  of  environment.  It  is  a  difference  between  eras 
more  marked  in  Conrad  than  in  many  of  his  contem 
poraries,  because,  like  Melville,  Hawthorne,  and  Poe, 
he  avoids  the  plain  prose  of  realism  and  sets  his  ro 
mantic  heroes  against  the  great  powers  of  nature — 
tempests,  the  earthquake,  solitude,  and  grandeur.  Thus 
the  contrast  is  marked  by  the  very  resemblance  of 
romantic  setting.  For  Conrad's  tempests  blow  only 
to  beat  upon  the  mind  whose  behavior  he  is  studying; 


Conrad  and  Melville  267 

his  moral  problems  are  raised  only  that  he  may  study 
their  effect  upon  man. 

If,  then,  we  are  to  estimate  Conrad's  work,  let  us 
begin  by  defining  him  in  these  terms.  He  is  a  Slav 
who  broods  by  racial  habit  as  well  as  by  necessity  of 
his  theme.  He  is  a  modern  who  accepts  the  growing 
control  of  physical  forces  by  the  intellect  and  turns 
from  the  mystery  of  nature  to  brood  upon  personality. 
From  this  personality  he  makes  his  stories.  External 
nature  bulks  large  in  them,  because  it  is  when  beat 
upon  by  adversity,  brought  face  to  face  with  the  ele 
mental  powers,  and  driven  into  strange  efforts  of  will 
by  the  storms  without  that  man's  personality  reaches 
the  tensest  pitch.  Plot  of  itself  means  little  to  Conrad 
and  that  is  why  so  few  can  tell  with  accuracy  the  stories 
of  his  longer  novels.  His  characters  are  concrete. 
They  are  not  symbols  of  the  moral  nature,  like  Mel 
ville's  men,  but  they  are  nevertheless  phases  of  per 
sonality  and  therefore  they  shift  and  dim  from  story 
to  story,  like  lanterns  in  a  wood.  Knowing  their  hearts 
to  the  uttermost,  and  even  their  gestures,  one  neverthe 
less  forgets  sometimes  their  names,  the  ends  to  which 
they  come,  the  tales  in  which  they  appear.  The  same 
phase,  indeed,  appears  under  different  names  in  several 
stories. 

Melville  crossed  the  shadow  line  in  his  pursuit  of 
the  secret  of  man's  relation  to  the  universe;  only  mag 
nificent  fragments  of  his  imagination  were  salvaged 
for  his  books.  Conrad  sails  on  an  open  sea,  tamed  by 
wireless  and  conquered  by  steel.  Mystery  for  him  lies 


268  Men  and  Their  Books 

not  beyond  the  horizon,  but  in  his  fellow  passengers. 
On  them  he  broods.  His  achievement  is  more  complete 
than  Melville's;  his  scope  is  less.  When  the  physicists 
have  resolved,  as  apparently  they  soon  will  do,  this 
earthy  matter  where  now  with  our  implements  and  our 
machinery  we  are  so  much  at  home,  into  mysterious 
force  as  intangible  as  will  and  moral  desire,  some  new 
transcendental  novelist  will  assume  Melville's  task. 
The  sea,  earth,  and  sky,  and  the  creatures  moving 
therein  again  will  become  symbols,  and  the  pursuit  of 
Moby  Dick  be  renewed.  But  now,  for  a  while,  science 
has  pushed  back  the  unknown  to  the  horizon  and  given 
us  a  little  space  of  light  in  the  darkness  of  the  universe. 
There  the  ego  is  for  a  time  the  greatest  mystery.  It  is 
an  opportunity  for  the  psychologists  and,  while  we 
are  thinking  less  of  the  soul,  they  have  rushed  to  study 
the  mechanics  of  the  brain.  It  was  Conrad's  oppor 
tunity  also  to  brood  upon  the  romance  of  personality 
at  the  moment  of  man's  greatest  victory  over  dark  ex 
ternal  force. 


The  Novelist  of  Pity 

To  those  interested  in  the  meaning  of  the  generation 
that  has  now  left  us  quivering  on  the  beach  of  after 
war,  Thomas  Hardy's  books  are  so  engrossing  that  to 
write  of  them  needs  no  pretext;  yet  the  recent  publica 
tion  of  an  anniversary  edition  with  all  his  prefaces  in 
cluded  is  a  welcome  excuse  for  what  I  propose  to  make, 
not  so  much  an  essay  as  a  record  of  a  sudden  under 
standing.  Long  familiarity  with  Hardy's  novels  had 
led  to  an  afternoon  of  conversation  with  the  author 
himself  in  the  mildness  of  old  age.  But  he  remained 
for  me  a  still  inexplicable  figure,  belonging  to  an  earlier 
century,  yet  in  other  respects  so  clearly  abreast,  if  not 
ahead,  of  the  emotions  of  our  own  times,  that  at  eighty 
he  saw  the  young  men  beginning  to  follow  him.  It  was 
a  reading  of  "The  Dynasts,"  in  the  tall,  red  volumes  of 
the  new  edition,  that  suddenly  and  unexpectedly 
seemed  to  give  me  a  key. 

The  danger,  so  I  had  thought  and  think,  is  that 
Hardy  bids  fair  to  become  a  legendary  figure  with  an 
attribute,  as  is  the  way  with  such  figures,  better  known 
than  the  man  himself.  "Hardy,  oh,  yes,  the  pessimist" 
threatens  to  become  all  the  schoolboy  knows  and  all 
he  needs  to  know  of  him,  and  his  alleged  philosophy 
of  gloom  is  already  overshadowing  the  man's  intense 
interest  in  strong  and  appealing  life.  It  has  been  the 

269 


2/o  Men  and  Their  Books 

fate  of  many  a  great  artist  to  get  a  nickname,  like  a 
boy,  and  never  be  rid  of  it. 

I  do  not  wish  by  any  ingenious  fabrication  to  prove 
that  Hardy  was  not  a  pessimist.  He  is  the  father  of 
the  English  school  that  refuse  to  be  either  deists  or 
moralists,  and,  like  them,  pushes  his  stories  to  an  end 
that  is  often  bitter.  His  temperament  is  cast  in  that 
brooding,  reflective  mood  that  concerns  itself  less 
readily  with  jollity  than  with  grief,  and  is  therefore  ever 
slanting  toward  pessimism.  This,  even  his  style  indi 
cates.  Like  the  somber  Hawthorne's,  his  style  is  brood 
ing,  adumbrative,  rather  than  incisive  or  brilliant,  and 
it  often  limps  among  the  facts  of  his  story  like  a  man 
in  pain.  Indeed,  Hardy  is  seldom  a  stylist,  except  when 
his  mood  is  somber;  therefore  it  is  by  his  sadder 
passages  that  we  remember  him.  Yet  the  most  impor 
tant  fact  about  Hardy  is  not  that  he  is  pessimistic. 

His  manner  of  telling  a  story,  however,  helps  to  con 
firm  the  popular  impression.  Hardy's  plots  are  a  series 
of  accidents,  by  which  the  doom  of  some  lovely  or 
aspiring  spirit  comes  upon  it  by  the  slow  drift  of  mis 
fortune.  Tess,  Grace,  Eustacia,  Jude — it  is  clear 
enough  to  what  joys  and  sorrows  their  natures  make 
them  liable.  But  the  master  prepares  for  them  trivial 
error,  unhappy  coincidence,  unnecessary  misfortune, 
until  it  is  not  surprising  if  the  analytic  mind  insists 
that  he  is  laboring  some  thesis  of  pessimism  to  be 
worked  out  by  concrete  example. 

Nevertheless,  this  is  incomplete  definition,  and  it  is 
annoying  that  the  dean  of  letters  in  our  tongue  should 


The  Novelist  of  Pity  271 

be  subjected  to  a  sophomoric  formula  in  which  the  em 
phasis  is  wrongly  placed.  The  critics,  in  general,  have 
defined  this  pessimism,  stopped  there,  and  said,  this  is 
Hardy.  But  youth  that  does  not  like  pessimism  reads 
Hardy  avidly.  More  light  is  needed. 

Mr.  Hardy  himself  does  not  suggest  the  simple  and 
melancholy  pessimist.  A  mild  old  man,  gentleness  is 
the  first  quality  one  feels  in  him,  but  at  eighty  he  still 
waxed  his  mustache  tips,  and  his  eyes  lit  eagerly.  I 
remember  how  earnestly  he  denied  knowledge  of  sci 
ence,  piqued,  I  suppose,  by  the  omniscient  who  had 
declared  that  his  art  consisted  of  applying  the  results 
of  scientific  inquiry  to  the  study  of  simple  human 
nature.  If  his  treatment  of  nature  was  scientific,  as  I 
affirmed,  his  wife  agreed,  and  he  did  not  deny,  then, 
he  implied,  his  knowledge  came  by  intuition,  not  by 
theory.  The  war  was  still  on  when  I  talked  with  him. 
It  had  lifted  him  to  poetry  at  first,  but  by  1918  no 
longer  interested  him  vitally.  "It  is  too  mechanical," 
he  said.  His  novels,  where  fate  seems  to  operate  me 
chanically  sometimes,  he  was  willing  that  day  to  set 
aside  as  nil.  Poetry,  he  thought,  was  the  only  proper 
form  of  expression.  The  novel  was  too  indirect;  too 
wasteful  of  time  and  space  in  its  attempt  to  come  at 
real  issues.  Yet  these  real  issues,  it  appeared  as  we 
talked,  were  not  theories.  Ideas,  he  said,  if  empha 
sized,  destroy  art.  Writers,  he  thought,  in  the  future 
would  give  up  pure  fiction  (serious  writers,  I  suppose 
he  meant).  Poetry  would  be  their  shorthand;  .they 
would  by  intenser  language  cut  short  to  their  end* 


272  Men  and  Their  Books 

What  was  his  end?  Not  mechanical,  scientific 
theories,  that  was  clear.  Not  mere  realistic  descrip 
tion  of  life.  He  told  me  he  had  little  faith  in  mere  ob 
servation,  except  for  comic  or  quaint  characterization. 
He  had  seldom  if  ever  studied  a  serious  character  from 
a  model.  One  woman  he  invented  entirely  (was  it 
Tess?)  and  she  was  thought  to  be  his  best.  What, 
then,  was  this  essence  which  the  novelist,  growing  old, 
would  convey  now  in  concentrated  form  by  poetry 
which  to  him,  so  he  said,  was  story-telling  in  verse. 

It  is  easier  to  understand  what  he  meant  if  one 
thinks  how  definitely  Hardy  belongs  to  his  age,  the  lat 
ter  nineteenth  century,  in  spite  of  his  Teachings  for 
ward.  On  the  one  hand,  his  very  gentleness  is  charac 
teristic  of  a  period  that  was  above  all  others  humane. 
On  the  other,  his  somber  moods  sprang  from  a  genera 
tion  that  was  the  first  to  understand  the  implications 
of  the  struggle  for  life  in  the  animal  world  all  about 
them.  They,  to  be  sure,  deduced  from  what  they  saw 
a  vague  theory  of  evolution  in  which  the  best  (who 
were  themselves)  somehow  were  to  come  out  best  in 
the  end.  He,  though  gentle  as  they  were,  deduced 
nothing  so  cheerful,  saw  rather  the  terrible  discrepan 
cies  between  fact  and  theory,  so  that  his  very  gentle 
ness  made  him  pessimistic,  where  Browning  was  op 
timistic.  Then,  like  Hawthorne  in  the  generation  be 
fore  him,  Hardy  went  back  to  an  earlier,  simpler  life 
than  his  own,  and  there  made  his  inquiries.  Haw 
thorne,  who  did  not  accept  the  theology  of  Puritanism, 
was  yet  strangely  troubled  by  the  problem  of  sin. 


The  Novelist  of  Pity  273 

Hardy,  accepting  the  implacability  of  evolution  with 
out  its  easy  optimism,  was  intensely  moved  to  pity. 
This  is  his  open  secret. 

The  clearest  statement  is  in  his  poetry,  where  again 
and  again,  in  our  conversation  that  day,  he  seemed  to 
be  placing  it— most  of  all,  I  think,  in  "The  Dynasts." 

"The  Dynasts"  was  published  too  soon.  We  Eng 
lish  speakers,  in  1904-1906,  were  beginning  to  read 
plays  again,  under  the  stimulus  of  a  dramatic  revival, 
and  the  plays  we  read  were  successful  on  the  stage. 
As  I  recollect  the  criticism  of  "The  Dynasts,"  much 
of  it  at  least  was  busied  with  the  form  of  the  drama, 
its  great  length  and  unwieldiness.  We  thought  of  it 
not  as  a  dramatic  epic,  but  as  a  dramatized  novel — a 
mistake.  We  thought  that  Hardy  was  taking  the  long 
way  around,  when  in  truth  he  had  found  a  short  cut 
to  his  issues.  That  "The  Dynasts,"  considering  the 
vastness  of  its  Napoleonic  subject,  was  far  more  con 
cise,  more  direct,  clearer  than  his  novels,  did  not  be 
come  manifest,  although  the  sharper-eyed  may  have 
seen  it. 

In  "The  Dynasts"  I  find  all  of  Hardy.  The  Im 
manent  Will  is  God,  as  Hardy  conceives  Him,  neither 
rational  nor  entirely  conscious,  frustrating  His  own 
seeming  ends,  without  irony  and  without  compassion, 
and  yet  perhaps  evolving  like  His  world,  clearing  like 
men's  visions,  moving  towards  consistency.  The  Sin 
ister  Angel  and  the  Ironic  Angel  are  moods  well  known 
to  Hardy,  but  not  loved  by  him.  The  Spirit  of  the 
Years  that  sees  how  poor  human  nature  collides  with 


274  Men  and  Their  Books 

accident,  or  the  inevitable,  and  is  bruised,  is  Hardy's 
reasoned  philosophy.  The  Spirit  of  Pities  (not  always, 
as  he  says,  logical  or  consistent)  is  Hardy's  own  desire, 
his  will,  his  faint  but  deep-felt  hope.  I  quote,  from  the 
very  end  of  the  great  spectacle,  some  lines  in  which  the 
Spirits,  who  have  watched  the  confused  tragedy  of  the 
Napoleonic  age,  sum  up  their  thoughts: 

AFTER  SCENE 
SPIRIT  OF  THE  YEARS 

Thus  doth  the  Great  Foresightless  mechanize 
Its  blank  entrancement  now  as  evermore 
Its  ceaseless  ardstries  in  circumstance.  .  .  . 
Yet  seems  this  vast  and  singular  confection 
Wherein  our  scenery  glints  of  scantest  size, 
Inutile  all — so  far  as  reasonings  tell. 

SPIRIT  OF  PITIES 

Thou  arguest  still  the  Inadvertent  Mind. — 
But,  even  so,  shall  blankness  be  for  aye?  .  .  . 

SPIRIT  OF  THE  YEARS 
What  wouldst  have  hoped  and  had  the  Will  to  be?  .  .  . 

SEMI-CHORUS  I  OF  THE  PITIES 

Nay; — shall  not  Its  blindness  break? 
Yea,  must  not  Its  heart  awake, 

Promptly  tending 

To  Its  mending 
In  a  genial  germing  purpose,  and  for  loving-kindness'  sake? 


The  Novelist  of  Pity  275 

SEMI-CHORUS  II 

Should  It  never 
Curb  or  cure 
Aught  whatever 
Those  endure 

Whom  It  quickens,  let  them  darkle  to  extinction  swift  and 
sure. 

CHORUS 

But — a  stirring  thrills  the  air 
Like  to  sounds  of  joyance  there 
That  the  rages 
Of  the  ages 
Shall  be  cancelled,  and  deliverance  offered  from  the  darts 

that  were, 

Consciousness  the  Will  informing,  till  It  fashions  all  things 
fair! 

The  Spirit  of  the  Years  (which  is  another  name  for 
Hardy's  reflections  upon  life  and  history)  planned  in 
sad  conviction  of  the  "blank  enhancement"  of  the 
Great  Foresightless  Will,  those  sad  narratives  in  which 
innocence,  as  in  "Tess  of  the  dTJbervilles,"  is  crushed, 
or  vivid  personality  frustrated,  as  in  "The  Return  of 
the  Native."  It  is  the  Spirit  of  Pities  in  Hardy  which 
wrote  the  stories.  Philosophy  constructed  them,  but 
pity  worked  them  out. 

The  characters  that  Hardy  loved — Grace,  Marty 
South,  Jude,  Tess — are  life,  brooding,  intense,  poten 
tial,  and  lovely,  struggling  against  a  fate  which  they 


276  Men  and  Their  Books 

help  to  draw  upon  themselves,  but  which  is,  neverthe 
less,  not  necessary,  not  rational.  The  cruelty  of  this 
fate  he  assumes  and  depicts,  but  the  stories  are  not 
told  to  describe  it.  It  is  his  creatures  that  get  the 
color,  the  interest;  they  are  valuable  to  us,  and  would 
be  to  him,  whatever  the  truth  of  his  philosophy.  But 
because  he  loves  life,  the  living  thing,  even  the  lizard 
in  the  woods,  he  broods  upon  their  frustrations. 

Pessimistic  Hardy  is,  as  any  gentle  heart  would  be 
who  chose  to  study  misfortune;  yet  pessimist  is  not 
the  right  term  for  him.  Realist  he  is  clearly,  in  the 
philosophic  sense  of  one  who  is  willing  to  view  things 
as  they  are  without  prejudice.  I  seek  a  term  for  a 
mild  spirit  who  sees  clearly  that  the  sufferer  is  more 
intelligible  than  his  fate,  and  so  is  pitiful  even  when 
most  ruthless  in  the  depiction  of  misfortune.  Pity  for 
the  individual,  not  despair  of  the  race,  is  his  motive. 
And  pity  makes  his  gentle  style,  pity  makes  him  re 
gardless  of  artifice,  and  gives  his  often  clumsy  novels 
an  undercurrent  which  sweeps  them  beyond  technical 
masterpieces  whose  only  merit  is  sharpness  of  thought. 
It  is  instructive  to  compare  the  relative  fortunes  of 
Hardy  and  Meredith,  once  always  bracketed — the 
apostle  of  pity  in  comparison  with  the  most  subtle  and 
brilliant  mind  of  his  time.  Hardy  has  outranked  him. 

Already  it  begins  to  appear  that  the  inconsistent, 
half-conscious  Will  that  was  the  sum  and  substance  of 
Hardy's  pessimism  was  given  certain  attributes  of 
gloom  that  scarcely  belonged  to  it.  The  ruthless  strug 
gle  for  life  by  which  the  fittest  for  the  circumstances 


The  Novelist  of  Pity  277 

of  the  moment,  and  by  no  means  the  best,  survive  at 
the  expense  of  the  others  is  no  longer  conceived  as  the 
clear  law  of  human  life.  Science,  with  the  rediscovery 
of  Mendelism  and  its  insistence  upon  psychological 
factors  has  submitted  important  qualifications  to  this 
deduction  which  Hardy,  in  common  with  others  in 
tellectually  honest  of  his  age,  was  forced  to  make.  But 
it  is  not  Hardy's  philosophy,  sound  or  unsound,  that 
counts  in  his  art,  except  in  so  far  as  it  casts  the  plan 
of  his  stories,  or  sometimes,  as  in  "Tess,"  or  "The 
Woodlanders,"  gives  too  much  play  to  cruel  accident, 
and  therefore  an  air  of  unreality  to  the  tenser  moments 
of  the  plots.  Our  critical  emphasis  in  the  past  has 
been  wrong.  It  should,  to  follow  Hardy's  own  words, 
be  set  not  upon  the  idea,  the  suggested  explanation  of 
misfortune,  but  upon  the  living  creatures  in  his  novels 
and  poems  alike.  It  is  the  characters  he  wrought  in 
pity,  and,  it  would  appear,  in  hope,  that  make  him  a 
great  man  in  our  modern  world,  although  only  once 
did  he  pass  beyond  the  bounds  of  his  primitive  Wessex. 
The  novelist  of  pity  and  its  poet,  not  the  spokesman 
for  pessimism,  is  the  title  I  solicit  for  him. 


Henry  James 

IT  has  always  surprised  Europeans  that  Henry  James, 
the  most  intellectual  of  modern  novelists,  should  have 
been  an  American;  for  most  Europeans  believe,  as  does 
Lowes  Dickinson,  that  we  are  an  intelligent  but  an 
unintellectual  race.  Was  the  fact  so  surprising  after 
all?  The  most  thoroughgoing  pessimists  come  from 
optimistic  communities.  Henry  James,  considered  as 
a  literary  phenomenon,  represented  a  sensitive  mind's 
reaction  against  the  obviousness  of  the  life  that  one 
finds  in  most  American  "best  sellers."  I  suppose  that 
he  reacted  too  far.  I  feel  sure  of  it  when  he  is  so  un- 
obvious  that  I  cannot  understand  him.  And  yet  every 
American  writer  must  feel  a  little  proud  that  there  was 
one  of  our  race  who  could  make  the  great  refusal  of 
popularity,  sever,  with  those  intricate  pen  strokes  of 
his,  the  bonds  of  interest  that  might  have  held  the 
"general  reader,"  and  write  just  as  well  as  he  knew 
how. 

Whether  his  novels  and  short  stories  gained  by  this 
heroic  "highbrowism,"  is  another  question.  Certainly 
they  did  not  always  do  so.  To  get  a  million  of  readers 
is  no  sure  sign  of  greatness;  but  to  find  only  thousands, 
as  did  Henry  James  in  his  later  books,  is  to  be  deplored. 
In  "Daisy  Miller"  and  "The  Bostonians"  he  was  a  pop 
ular  novelist  of  the  best  kind,  a  novelist  who  drew  the 

278 


Henry  James  279 

best  people  to  be  his  readers.  But  men  read  "The 
Golden  Bowl"  and  "The  Wings  of  the  Dove"  because 
they  were  skilful  rather  than  because  they  were  inter 
esting.  They  were  novelists'  novels,  like  the  profes 
sional  matinees  that  "stars"  give  on  Tuesday  aft 
ernoons  for  the  benefit  of  rivals  and  imitators  in  art. 

But  to  stop  here  would  be  to  misunderstand  totally 
the  greatest  craftsman  that  has  come  out  of  America. 
The  flat  truth  is  that  Henry  James  was  not  a  novelist 
at  all,  at  least  in  the  good,  old-fashioned  sense  that  we 
usually  give  to  the  word.  He  was  primarily  a  critic; 
the  greatest  American  critic  since  Poe.  Sometimes  he 
criticized  literature  with  supreme  success,  as  in  his 
"Notes  on  Novelists"  of  1914;  but  ordinarily  he  criti 
cized  life.  His  later  novels  are  one-fifth  story,  one- 
fifth  character  creation,  and  the  rest  pure  criticism 
of  life. 

There  is  a  curious  passage  in  his  "A  Small  Boy  and 
Others" — the  biography  of  the  youth  of  William 
James  and  himself — telling  how  as  a  child  in  the  hotels 
and  resorts  of  Europe  he  spent  his  time  in  looking  on 
at  what  was  happening  about  him.  He  never  got  into 
the  game  very  far,  because  he  preferred  to  think  about 
it.  That  is  what  Henry  James  did  all  his  life  long.  He 
looked  on,  thought  about  life  with  that  wonderfully 
keen,  and  subtle,  and  humorous  mind  of  his,  turned  it 
into  criticism;  then  fitted  the  results  with  enough  plot 
to  make  them  move, — and  there  was  a  so-called  novel. 
Every  one  knows  how  in  his  last  edition  he  rewrote 
some  of  his  early  stories  to  make  them  more  subtle.  It 


280  Men  and  Their  Books 

would  have  been  amusing  if  he  had  seen  fit  to  rewrite 
them  altogether  as  critical  essays  upon  international 
life!  I  wonder  how  much  they  would  have  suffered  by 
the  change. 

This  is  why  so  many  readers  have  been  very  proud 
of  Henry  James,  and  yet  unable  to  defend  him  suc 
cessfully  against  critics  who  pulled  out  handfuls  of 
serpentine  sentences  from  his  latest  novel,  asking,  "Do 
you  call  this  fiction?"  It  was  not  fiction,  not  fiction 
at  least  as  she  used  to  be  written;  it  was  subtle,  grace 
ful,  cunning  analysis  of  life.  Fiction  is  synthesis — ' 
building  up,  making  a  Becky  Sharp,  inventing  a  Meg 
Merrilies,  constructing  a  plot.  Criticism  is  analysis — 
taking  down.  Henry  James  was  not  so  good  at  putting 
together  as  at  taking  to  pieces.  He  was  able  in  one  art, 
but  in  the  other  he  was  great. 

The  current  tendency  to  make  every  new  figure  in 
world  literature  conform  to  Greatness  of  a  recognized 
variety  or  be  dismissed,  is  unfortunate  and  mislead 
ing.  We  are  to  be  congratulated  that  the  greatness  of 
Henry  James  was  of  a  peculiar  and  irregular  kind,  a 
keen,  inventing  greatness,  American  in  this  if  in  noth 
ing  else.  Unnumbered  writers  of  the  day,  of  whom 
Mr.  Kipling  is  not  the  least  eminent,  have  profited  by 
his  influence,  and  learned  from  him  to  give  the  final, 
subtle  thought  its  final  form.  If  that  form  in  his  own 
case  was  tortuous,  intricate,  difficult,  why  so  was  the 
thought.  If  it  makes  hard  reading,  his  subject  at  least 
got  hard  thinking.  Before  you  condemn  that  curious 
style  of  his — so  easy  to  parody,  so  hard  to  imitate — 


Henry  James  281 

ask  whether  such  refinement  of  thought  as  his  could 
be  much  more  simply  expressed.  Sometimes  he  could 
have  been  simpler,  undoubtedly;  it  was  his  fault  that 
he  did  not  care  to  be;  but  that  "plain  American"  would 
usually  have  served  his  purpose,  is  certainly  false. 

Henry  James  must  yield  first  honors  as  a  novelist,  it 
may  be,  to  others  of  his  century  if  not  of  his  genera 
tion.  As  a  writer,  above  all  as  a  writer  of  fine,  im 
aginative  criticism  of  the  intellect  as  it  moves  through 
the  complexities  of  modern  civilization,  he  yields  to 
no  one  of  our  time.  Whether  he  has  earned  his  dis 
tinction  as  an  American  writer  I  do  not  know,  although 
I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  he  is  more  American  than 
the  critics  suspect;  but  as  a  master  of  English,  and  as 
a  great  figure  in  the  broad  sweep  of  international  Eng 
lish  literature,  his  place  is  secure. 


The  Satiric  Rage  of  Butler 

SAMUEL  BUTLER'S  "Erewhon"  has  passed  safely  into 
the  earthly  paradise  of  the  so-called  classics.  It  has 
been  recommended  by  distinguished  men  of  letters,  re 
printed  and  far  more  widely  read  than  on  its  first  ap 
pearance;  it  has  passed,  by  quotation  and  reference, 
into  contemporary  literature,  and  been  taught  in  col 
lege  classes.  "Erewhon  Revisited,"  written  thirty 
years  after  "Erewhon,"  is  less  well  known. 

Mr.  Moreby  Acklom  (whose  name,  let  me  assure 
the  suspicious  reader,  is  his  own  and  not  an  Ere- 
whonian  inversion),  in  a  most  informing  preface  to  a 
new  edition,  makes  two  assertions  which  may  serve  as 
my  excuse  for  again  endeavoring  to  explain  the  fasci 
nation  for  our  generation  of  the  work  of  Samuel  Butler. 
College  professors,  he  avers,  have  an  antipathy  for 
Samuel  Butler;  the  chief  interest  of  Butler,  he  further 
states,  was  in  theology.  Now  I  am  a  college  professor 
without  antipathy  to  Samuel  Butler,  with,  on  the  con 
trary,  the  warmest  admiration  for  his  sardonic  genius. 
And  furthermore  Butler's  antipathy  for  college  pro 
fessors,  which  is  supposed  to  have  drawn  their  fire  in 
return,  is  based  upon  a  ruling  passion  far  deeper  than 
his  accidental  interest  in  theology,  a  passion  that  gives 
the  tone  and  also  the  key  to  the  best  of  his  writings 

282 


The  Satiric  Rage  of  Butler  283 

and  which  brought  him  into  conflict  with  the  "vested 
interests"  of  his  times.  It  is  his  passion  for  honest 
thinking.  If  Butler's  mark  had  been  theology  merely, 
his  books  would  have  passed  with  the  interest  in  his 
target.  He  would  be  as  difficult  reading  to-day  as 
Swift  in  his  "Tale  of  a  Tub." 

Like  most  of  the  great  satirists  of  the  world,  Butler's 
saeva  indignatio  was  aroused  by  the  daily  conflicts  be 
tween  reason  and  stupidity,  between  candor  and  dis- 
ingenuousness,  with  all  their  mutations  of  hypocrisy, 
guile,  deceit,  and  sham.  In  "Erewhon"  it  was  human 
unreason,  as  a  clever  youth  sees  it;  that  he  was  attack 
ing.  We  remember  vividly  the  beautiful  Erewhonians, 
who  knew  disease  to  be  sin,  but  believed  vice  to  be 
only  disease.  We  remember  the  "straighteners"  who 
gave  moral  medicine  to  the  ethically  unwell,  the  musi 
cal  banks,  the  hypothetical  language,  the  machines  that 
threatened  to  master  men,  as  in  the  war  of  1914-1918 
and  in  the  industrial  system  of  to-day  they  have  mas 
tered  men  and  made  them  their  slaves.  There  was  a 
youthful  vigor  in  "Erewhon,"  a  joyous  negligence  as 
to  where  the  blow  should  fall,  a  sense  of  not  being  re 
sponsible  for  the  world  the  author  flicked  with  his 
lash,  which  saved  the  book  from  the  condemnation  that 
would  have  been  its  fate  had  the  Victorians  taken  it 
seriously.  It  was  an  uneven  book,  beginning  with  vivid 
narrative  in  the  best  tradition  of  Defoe,  losing  itself 
finally  in  difficult  argument,  and  cut  short  in  mid- 
career. 

"Erewhon  Revisited"  is  much  better  constructed. 


284  Men  and  Their  Books 

The  old  craftsman  has  profited  by  his  years  of  labor 
in  the  British  Museum.  He  has  a  story  to  tell,  and  tells 
it,  weighting  it  with  satire  judiciously,  as  a  fisherman 
weights  his  set  line.  If  his  tale  becomes  unreal  it  is 
only  when  he  knows  the  aumoris*  ready  to  hear  the 
author  in  person.  If  the  Erewhon  of  his  first  visit 
does  not  fit  his  new  conception  he  ruthlessly  changes 
it.  One  misses  the  satiric  tours  de  jorce  of  the  first 
"Erewhon."  There  is  nothing  so  brilliant  as  the  chap 
ters  on  disease  and  machines  which  for  fifty  years  since 
life  has  been  illustrating.  But  "Erewhon  Revisited"  is 
a  finished  book; -it  has  artistic  unity. 

And  why  does  Butler  revisit  Erewhon?  Not  be 
cause  he  was  trained  as  a  priest  and  must  have  an  ex 
cuse  to  rediscuss  theology,  although  the  story  of  the 
book  suggests  this  explanation.  Higgs,  the  mysterious 
stranger  of  "Erewhon,"  who  escaped  by  a  balloon,  has 
become  a  subject  for  myth.  In  Erewhon  he  is  de 
clared  the  child  of  the  sun.  Miracles  gather  about  the 
supreme  miracle  of  his  air-born  departure.  His  "Say 
ings,"  a  mixture  of  Biblical  quotation  and  homely 
philosophy,  strained  through  Erewhonian  intellects, 
become  a  new  ethics  and  a  new  theology.  His  clothes 
are  adopted  for  national  wear  (although  through  un 
certainty  as  to  how  to  put  them  on  one  part  of  the 
kingdom  goes  with  buttons  and  pockets  behind). 
Sunchildism  becomes  the  state  religion.  The  musical 
banks,  which  had  been  trading  in  stale  idealism,  take 
it  over  and  get  new  life;  and  the  professors  of  Bridge- 
ford,  the  intellectuals  of  the  kingdom,  capitalize  it,  as 


The  Satiric  Rage  of  Butler  285 

we  say  to-day,  and  thus  tighten  their  grip  on  the  pub 
lic's  mind  and  purse. 

Butler's  purpose  is  transparent.  It  is  not,  as  Long 
mans,  who  refused  the  work,  believed,  to  attack  Chris 
tianity.  It  is  rather  to  expose  the  ease  with  which  a 
good  man  and  his  message  (Higgs  brought  with  him 
to  Erewhon  evangelical  Christianity)  can  become 
miraculous,  can  become  an  instrument  for  politics  and 
a  cause  of  sham.  Indeed,  Butler  says  in  so  many  words 
to  the  Anglicans  of  his  day:  "Hold  fast  to  your  Chris 
tianity,  for  false  as  it  is  it  is  better  than  what  its  ene 
mies  would  substitute;  but  go  easy  with  the  miracu 
lous,  the  mythical,  the  ritualistic.  These  'tamper  with 
the  one  sure  and  everlasting  word  of  God  revealed  to 
us  by  human  experience/  " 

All  this  is  permanent  enough,  but  I  cannot  believe, 
as  most  commentators  do,  that  it  is  the  heart  of  the 
book;  or  if  it  is  the  heart  of  the  book,  it  is  not  its  fire. 
The  satiric  rage  of  Butler,  who  in  the  person  of  Higgs 
returns  to  Erewhon  to  find  himself  deified,  does  not  fall 
upon  the  fanatic  worshipers  of  the  sunchild,  nor  even 
upon  the  musical  banks  who  have  grown  strong  through 
his  cult.  It  kindles  for  the  ridiculous  Hanky  and 
Panky,  professors  respectively  of  worldly  wisdom  and 
worldly  unwisdom  at  Bridge  ford,  and  hence,  according 
to  Mr.  Acklom,  the  antipathy  toward  Butler  of  all  col 
lege  professors. 

But  it  is  not  because  they  are  professors  that  Butler 
hates  Hanky  and  Panky;  it  is  because  they  represent 
that  guaranteed  authority  which  in  every  civilization 


286  Men  and  Their  Books 

can  and  does  exploit  the  passions  and  the  weaknesses 
of  human  nature  for  its  own  material  welfare.  Butler 
had  been  conducting  a  lifelong  warfare  against 
scholars  who  defended  the  status  quo  of  the  church 
and  against  scientists  who  were  consolidating  a 
strategic  (and  remunerative)  position  for  themselves 
in  the  universities.  He  saw,  or  thought  he  saw,  Eng 
lish  religion  milked  for  the  benefit  of  Oxford  and  Cam 
bridge  graduates  needful  of  "livings7';  and  Darwinism 
and  the  new  sciences  generally  being  swept  into  the 
maw  of  the  same  professionally  intellectual  class.  A 
free  lance  himself,  with  a  table  in  the  British  Museum, 
some  books  and  a  deficit  instead  of  an  income  from  his 
intellectual  labors,  he  attacked  the  vested  interests  of 
his  world. 

He  exposed  the  dangers  which  wait  upon  all  miracu 
lous  religions,  the  shams  which  they  give  birth  to.  But 
not  because  he  was  obsessed  with  theology.  If  he 
had  lived  in  the  nineteen  hundreds  he  would  have 
studied,  I  think,  sociology  and  economics  instead  of 
theology  and  biology.  He  would  have  attacked,  in 
England,  the  House  of  Lords  instead  of  Oxford,  and 
had  an  eye  for  the  intellectuals  who  are  beginning  to 
sway  the  mighty  power  of  the  labor  unions.  He  would 
have  been  a  Radical-Conservative  and  voted  against 
both  the  British  Labor  party  and  the  Coalition.  In 
America  he  would  have  lashed  the  trusts,  execrated  the 
Anti-Saloon  League,  admired  and  been  exasperated  by 
Mr.  Wilson,  hated  the  Republican  party,  and  probably 
have  voted  for  it  lest  worse  follow  its  defeat.  He  would 


The  Satiric  Rage  of  Butler  287 

have  been,  in  short,  a  liberal  of  a  species  very  much 
needed  just  now  in  America,  a  bad  party  man,  de 
structive  rather  than  constructive,  no  leader,  but  a 
satirist  when,  God  knows,  we  need  one  for  the  clearing 
of  our  mental  atmosphere. 

And  unless  I  am  wrong  throughout  this  brief  analy 
sis,  Samuel  Butler,  who  mentally  and  spiritually  is 
essentially  our  contemporary,  would  not,  if  he  were 
writing  now,  concern  himself  with  theology  at  all, 
but  with  the  shams  and  unreasons  which  are  the  vested 
tyrannies  set  over  us  to-day.  Erewhon,  when  we  last 
hear  of  it,  is  about  to  become  a  modern  colonial  state. 
Its  concern  is  with  an  army  and  with  economics. 
Chow-Bok,  the  savage,  now  become  a  missionary 
bishop,  is  about  to  administer  its  ecclesiastical  system. 
Its  spiritual  problems  no  longer  center  upon  the 
validity  of  miraculous  tradition  and  the  logic  of  a 
theological  code.  But  the  vested  interests  (repre 
sented  by  Pocus,  the  son  of  Hanky)  remain.  These 
Butler  would  attack  in  the  needed  fashion.  These  re 
main  the  enemy. 


VII 

Conclusion 


Defining  the  Indefinable 

I  AM  well  aware  that  literature  or  even  such  an  incon 
siderable  part  of  literature  as  this  gay  book  on  my  desk 
or  the  poem  on  the  printed  page,  as  a  whole  is  indefin 
able.  Every  critic  of  literature  from  Aristotle  down 
has  let  some  of  it  slip  between  his  fingers.  If  he  de 
scribes  the  cunning  form  of  a  play  or  a  story,  then  the 
passion  in  it,  or  the  mood  behind  it,  eludes  him.  If  he 
defines  the  personality  of  the  writer,  the  art  which 
makes  all  the  difference  between  feeling  and  expres 
sion  escapes  definition.  No  ten  philosophers  yet  agree 
as  to  whether  beauty  is  an  absolute  quality,  or  simply 
an  attribute  of  form,  whether  a  poem  is  beautiful  be 
cause  it  suggests  and  approaches  an  archetype,  or 
whether  it  is  beautiful  because  it  perfectly  expresses 
its  subject. 

And  yet  when  the  ambition  to  explain  and  describe 
and  define  everything  is  humbly  set  aside  there  re 
mains  a  good  honest  job  for  the  maker  of  definitions, 
and  it  is  a  job  that  can  be  done.  I  may  not  be  able  to 
tell  what  art  is,  but  I  can  tell  what  it  isn't.  I  may 
fail  to  make  a  formula  for  literature,  but  I  can  try  at 
least  to  tell  what  Thomas  Hardy  has  chiefly  accom 
plished,  define  Conrad's  essential  quality,  point  out 
the  nature  of  romantic  naturalism,  and  distinguish  be 
tween  sentiment  and  sentimentality.  And  if  such 

291 


292  Conclusion 

things  were  ever  worth  doing  they  are  worth  doing  now. 

Only  a  prophet  dares  say  that  we  are  at  the  begin 
ning  of  a  great  creative  period  in  the  United  States, 
but  any  open-eyed  observer  can  see  that  an  era  of 
American  literary  criticism  is  well  under  way.  The 
war,  which  confused  and  afterward  dulled  our  think 
ing,  stirred  innumerable  critical  impulses,  which  are 
coming  to  the  surface,  some  like  bubbles  and  others 
like  boils,  but  some  as  new  creations  of  the  American 
intellect.  The  new  generation  has  shown  itself  acri 
moniously  critical.  It  slaps  tradition  and  names  its 
novels  and  poetry  as  Adam  named  the  animals  in  the 
garden,  out  of  its  own  imagination.  The  war  shook  it 
loose  from  convention,  and  like  a  boy  sent  away  to 
college,  its  first  impulse  is  to  disown  the  Main  Street 
that  bore  it.  Youth  of  the  go's  admired  its  elders  and 
imitated  them  unsuccessfully.  Youth  of  the  nineteen 
twenties  imitates  France  and  Russia  of  the  70*3,  and 
contemporary  England.  It  may  eventually  do  more 
than  the  go's  did  with  America;  in  the  meantime, 
while  it  flounders  in  the  attempt  to  create,  it  is  at  least 
highly  critical.  Furthermore,  the  social  unrest,  begin 
ning  before  the  war  and  likely  to  outlast  our  time,  has 
made  us  all  more  critical  of  literature.  Mark  Twain's 
"Yankee  in  King  Arthur's  Court"  turned  the  milk  of 
Tennyson's  aristocratic  "Idylls"  sour.  The  deep  drawn 
undercurrent  of  socialistic  thinking  urges  us  toward  a 
new  consideration  of  all  earlier  writing,  to  see  what  may 
be  its  social  significance.  The  "churl,"  the  "hind,"  the 


Defining  the  Indefinable  293 

"peasant,"  the  "first  servant"  and  "second  country 
man,"  who  were  the  mere  transitions  of  earlier  stories 
now  are  central  in  literature.  They  come  with  a  chal 
lenge,  and  when  we  read  Galsworthy,  Wells,  Sinclair, 
Dreiser,  Hardy's  "The  Dynasts,"  Bennett — we  are  con 
scious  of  criticizing  life  as  we  read.  The  pale  cast  of 
thought  has  sicklied  modern  pages.  The  more  serious 
works  of  art  are  also  literary  criticism. 

Again,  there  is  the  mingling  of  the  peoples,  greatest 
of  course  in  America.  Our  aliens  used  to  be  sub 
servient  to  the  national  tradition.  They  went  about 
becoming  rich  Americans  and  regarded  the  Anglo- 
American  culture  as  a  natural  phenomenon,  like  the 
climate,  to  which  after  a  while  they  would  accustom 
themselves.  Their  children  were  born  in  it.  But  now 
it  is  different.  The  Jews  particularly,  who  keep  an 
Oriental  insistence  upon  logic  even  longer  than  a  racial 
appearance,  have  passed  the  acquisitive  stage  and  be 
gin  to  throw  off  numerous  intellectuals,  as  much  at 
home  in  English  as  their  fellow  Americans,  but  criti 
cal  of  the  American  emotions,  and  the  American  way 
of  thinking,  as  only  a  brain  formed  by  different  tradi 
tions  can  be.  Soon  the  Mediterranean  races  domiciled 
here  will  pass  into  literary  expressiveness.  It  is  as  im 
possible  that  we  should  not  have  criticism  of  the 
national  tradition  expressed  in  our  literature  as  that 
an  international  congress  should  agree  upon  questions 
of  ethics  or  religion. 

And  of  course  the  new  internationalism,  which  is  far 
more  vigorous  than  appears  on  the  surface,  favors  such 


294  Conclusion 

criticism.  The  war  brought  America  and  Europe  two 
thousand  miles  closer,  and  the  habit  of  interest  in  what 
Europeans  are  thinking,  once  acquired,  is  not  likely  to 
be  lost.  No  American  writer  of  promise  can  hope  now 
to  escape  comparison  with  the  literatures  of  Western 
Europe,  and  comparison  means  a  new  impulse  to 
criticism. 

Fundamental,  creative  criticism  —  like  Sainte- 
Beuve's,  Matthew  Arnold's,  Walter  Pater's,  like  Dry- 
den's,  Brunetiere's,  De  Gourmont's,  or  Croce's — will 
presumably  come.  The  conditions,  both  of  publication 
and  of  audience,  are  ripe  for  it  now  in  the  United 
States.  But  there  is  a  good  deal  of  spade  work  in  the 
study  of  literature  to  be  done  first,  and  still  more  edu 
cation  of  the  reading  American  mind.  One  reason  why 
Lowell  was  not  a  great  critic  was  because  his  scholar 
ship  was  defective,  or,  to  put  it  more  fairly,  because 
the  scholarship  of  his  contemporaries,  with  whose 
knowledge  he  might  have  buttressed  his  own,  was  in 
complete.  And  if  a  twentieth  century  Sainte-Beuve 
should  begin  to  write  for  general  American  readers,  it 
is  doubtful  whether  they  would  accept  his  premises. 
Says  the  intellectual,  why  should  he  write  for  the  gen 
eral  public?  I  answer  that  if  he  writes  for  coteries 
only,  if  he  is  disdainful  of  the  intelligent  multitude,  he 
will  never  understand  them,  and  so  will  not  compre 
hend  the  national  literature  which  it  is  his  function  to 
stimulate,  interpret,  and  guide. 

The  spade  work  of  criticism  is  research,  investiga 
tion  into  the  facts  of  literature  and  into  its  social  back- 


^Defining  the  Indefinable 

ground.  The  scholar  is  sometimes,  but  not  often,  a 
critic.  He  finds  out  what  happened,  and  often  why 
it  happened.  He  analyzes,  but  he  does  not  usually 
make  a  synthesis.  He  writes  history,  but  he  cannot 
prophesy,  and  criticism  is  prophecy  implied  or  direct. 
Few  outside  the  universities  realize  the  magnitude  of 
American  research  into  literature,  even  into  American 
literature,  which  has  been  relatively  neglected.  A 
thousand  spades  have  been  at  work  for  a  generation. 
We  are  getting  the  facts,  or  we  are  learning  how  to 
get  them. 


But  before  we  may  expect  great  criticism  we  must 
educate  our  public,  and  ourselves,  in  that  clear  vision 
j  of  what  is  and  what  is  not,  which  from  Aristotle  down 
/  has  been  the  preliminary  to  criticism.    A  humble,  but 
a  useful,  way  to  begin  is  by  definition. 

I  use  definition  in  no  pedantic  sense.  I  mean,  in 
general,  logical  definition  where  the  class  or  genus  of 
the  thing  to  be  described — whether  best-selling  novel 
or  sentimental  tendency — is  first  made  clear,  and  then 
its  differentia,  its  differences  from  the  type  analyzed 
out  and  assorted.  But  this  process  in  literature  cannot 
be  as  formal  as  logic.  Good  literature  cannot  be  bound 
by  formulas.  Yet  when  a  poem  charged  with  hot  emo 
tion,  or  a  story  that  strays  into  new  margins  of  experi 
ence,  is  caught  and  held  until  one  can  compare  it  with 
others,  see  the  curve  on  which  it  is  moving,  guess  its 
origin  and  its  aim,  forever  after  it  becomes  easier  to 
understand,  more  capable  of  being  thought  about  and 
appreciated.  And  when  the  current  of  taste  of  some 


296  Conclusion 

new  generation  that  overflows  conventions  and  washes 
forward,  or  backward,  into  regions  long  unlaved,  is 
viewed  as  a  current,  its  direction  plotted,  its  force  esti 
mated,  its  quality  compared,  why  that  is  definition, 
and  some  good  will  come  of  it. 

Some  general  definition  of  that  intellectual  emotion 
which  we  call  good  reading  is  especially  needed  in 
America.  Most  of  us,  if  we  are  native  born,  have  been 
educated  by  a  set  of  literary  conventions  arranged  in 
convenient  categories.  That  is  more  or  less  true  of  all 
literary  education,  but  it  is  particularly  true  in  the 
United  States,  where  the  formal  teaching  of  English 
literature  per  se  began,  where,  as  nowhere  else  in  the 
world,  there  was  a  great  and  growing  population  eager 
to  become  literate  and  with  no  literary  traditions  be 
hind  it.  The  student  from  a  bookless  home  learned  to 
think  of  his  literature  as  primarily  something  to  be 
studied;  the  teacher  who  had  to  teach  thousands  like 
him  was  forced  to  reduce  living  literature  to  dead 
categories  in  order  that  a  little  of  it  at  least  should  be 
taught.  Thousands  of  Americans,  therefore,  of  our 
generation  emerged  from  their  training  with  a  set  of 
literary  definitions  which  they  assumed  to  be  true  and 
.supposed  to  be  culture.  Only  true  definitions  of  what 
literature  really  is  can  break  up  such  fossilized  de 
fining. 

On  the  other  hand,  that  large  proportion  of  our  best 
reading  population  which  is  not  native  in  its  traditions 
offers  a  different  but  equally  important  problem.  How 


Defining  the  Indefinable  297 

can  the  son  of  a  Russian  Jew,  whose  father  lived  in  a 
Russian  town,  who  himself  has  been  brought  up  in 
clamorous  New  York,  understand  Thoreau,  let  us  say, 
or  John  Muir,  or  Burroughs,  or  Willa  Gather,  without 
some  denning  of  the  nature  of  the  American  environ 
ment  and  the  relation  between  thought  and  the  soil? 
How  is  an  intelligent  German-American,  whose  cultural 
tradition  has  been  thoroughly  Teutonic,  to  make  him 
self  at  home  in  a  literature  whose  general  character, 
like  its  language,  is  English,  without  some  defining  of 
the  Anglo- American  tradition?  Lincoln  must  be  de 
fined  for  him;  Milton  must  be  defined  for  him;  most 
of  all  perhaps  Franklin  must  be  defined  for  him.  I 
have  chosen  elementary  examples,  but  my  meaning 
should  be  sufficiently  clear. 

And  the  American  critic — by  which  I  mean  you,  O 
discriminating  reader,  as  well  as  the  professional  who 
puts  pen  to  paper — is  equally  in  need  of  the  art  of 
definition.  The  books  we  read  and  write  are  on  differ 
ent  planes  of  absolute  excellence  or  un worthiness. 
There  is — to  take  the  novel — the  story  well  calculated 
to  pass  a  pleasant  hour  but  able  to  pass  nothing  else; 
there  is  the  story  with  a  good  idea  in  it  and  worth 
reading  for  the  idea  only;  there  is  the  story  worthless 
as  art  but  usefully  catching  some  current  phase  of  ex 
perience;  and  there  is  the  fine  novel  which  will  stand 
any  test  for  insight,  skill,  and  truth.  Now  it  is  folly 
to  apply  a  single  standard  to  all  these  types  of  story. 
It  can  be  done,  naturally,  but  it  accomplishes  nothing 
except  to  eliminate  all  but  the  shining  best.  That  is 


298  Conclusion 

a  task  for  history.  In  the  year  in  which  we  live — and 
it  is  sometimes  necessary  to  remind  the  austerer  critic 
that  we  always  live  in  the  present — there  are  a  hun 
dred  books,  of  poetry,  of  essays,  of  biography,  of  fic 
tion,  which  are  by  no  means  of  the  first  rank  and  yet 
are  highly  important,  if  only  as  news  of  what  the  world, 
in  our  present,  is  thinking  and  feeling.  They  cannot 
be  judged,  all  of  them,  on  the  top  plane  of  perfect  ex 
cellence;  and  if  we  judge  them  all  on  any  other  plane, 
good,  better,  best  get  inextricably  mixed. 

For  example,  consider  once  more  a  novel  which  at 
the  moment  of  this  writing  is  a  best-seller,  and  which 
with  reference  to  its  popularity  I  have  discussed  in  an 
earlier  essay.  I  mean  Mr.  Hutchinson's  "If  Winter 
Comes."  This  book  is  essentially  the  tragedy  of  a 
good  and  honest  soul  thrown  by  harsh  circumstance 
into  an  environment  which  is  bound  to  crush  him.  He 
has  the  wrong  wife,  he  has  the  wrong  business  associ 
ates,  the  girl  he  loves  is  separated  from  him  by  moral 
barriers.  If  he  breaks  through  these  he  injures  irrepar 
ably  his  own  sense  of  what  is  due  to  his  God  and  his 
fellow  man.  His  instincts  of  charity,  humor,  and  love 
rebound  upon  him.  He  is  too  Christian  for  England, 
and  too  guileless  for  life.  This  is  a  worthy  theme,  and 
yet  if  we  judge  this  novel  on  the  highest  plane  it  fails 
miserably.  For  Mr.  Hutchinson  stacks  the  cards.  He 
gives  his  hero  his  way  and  his  salvation,  after  much 
suffering,  by  a  series  of  lucky  accidents.  He  destroys 
the  problem  he  creates,  by  forging  an  answer. 

But  this  novel  should  not  be  finally  judged  on  the 


Defining  the  Indefinable  299 

highest  plane.  It  is  not  a  tragedy,  it  is  a  romance.  It 
belongs  on  the  plane  below,  the  plane  of  stories  told  to 
meet  the  secret  desires  of  humanity,  which  have  little 
to  do  with  reality,  and  are  quite  oblivious  to  fact.  On 
this  plane  "If  Winter  Comes"  ranks  highly,  for  it  is 
poignantly  told,  there  is  life  in  its  characters,  and  truth 
in  the  best  of  its  scenes.  Definition  saves  us  from  call 
ing  a  good  novel  great;  it  spares  us  the  unnecessary 
error  of  calling  a  good  and  readable  story  bad  because 
it  is  not  a  triumph  of  consistent  art. 

It  is  hard  enough  in  all  conscience  to  see  that  a  given 
book  is  good  for  this  but  not  good  for  that;  may  be 
praised  for  its  plot,  but  certainly  has  not  character 
enough  to  get  long  life.  But  when  the  difficulty  of 
adjusting  standards  is  increased  by  the  irresponsible 
hullabaloo  of  commercial  appreciation,  no  wonder  that 
sensible  people  estimate  foolishly,  and  critics  of  stand 
ing  are  induced  to  write  for  publication  remarks  that 
some  day  will  (or  should)  make  them  sick.  For  the 
publishers'  "blurb"  confuses  all  standards.  Every 
book  is  superlative  in  everything.  And  the  hack  re 
viewer,  when  he  likes  a  book,  likes  everything  and  ap 
plies  Shakespearian  adjectives  and  Tolstoyan  at 
tributes  to  creatures  of  dust  and  tinsel,  or  blunders 
helplessly  into  dispraise  of  scholarship,  restraint,  sub 
tlety,  taste,  originality — anything  that  he  does  not  un 
derstand. 

There  is  no  help  except  to  set  books  upon  their  planes 
and  assort  them  into  their  categories — which  is  merely 
to  define  them  before  beginning  to  criticize.  This  is 


300  Conclusion 

elementary  work  as  I  have  said,  which  may  lead  the 
critic  only  so  far  as  the  threshold,  and  cannot  always 
give  the  reader  that  complete  and  sympathetic  compre 
hension  of  what  he  has  read  which  is  the  final  object 
of  literary  criticism.  However,  in  an  age  when  over 
emphasis  has  been  commercialized,  and  where  the 
powerful  forces  of  print  can  be  mobilized  and  sent 
charging  everywhere  to  bowl  down  contrary  opinions, 
it  is  indispensable. 

Scholarly  books  have  been  dispraised  because  they 
were  not  exciting;  fine  novels  have  been  sneered  at  be 
cause  they  were  hard  to  read;  cheap  stories  have  been 
proclaimed  great  because  they  wore  a  pretense  of  seri 
ousness;  sentimentality  has  been  welcomed  because  it 
was  warm  hearted;  indecency  has  been  condemned  for 
immorality;  immorality  has  slipped  through  as  ro 
mance;  daring  has  been  mistaken  for  novelty;  pains 
taking  dulness,  for  careful  art;  self-revelation,  for 
world  knowledge;  pretty  writing,  for  literature;  vio 
lence,  for  strength;  and  warped  and  unhealthy  egoism 
for  the  wise  sincerity  which  is  the  soul  of  literature. 
In  all  such  instances  definition  is  the  prophylactic,  and 
often  the  cure. 

Writers,  most  of  all,  need  to  define  their  tasks.  I 
do  not  mean  their  technical  problems  merely,  although 
I  cannot  conceive  that  a  dramatist  or  playwright,  who 
has  his  subject  well  in  mind,  can  possibly  be  hurt  by 
thinking  out  his  methods  with  the  most  scrupulous 
care.  Lubbock's  recent  book  on  "The  Craft  of  Fic 
tion"  has  emphasized  an  art  of  approach  and  point  of 


Defining  the  Indefinable  301 

view  in  the  great  novelists  which  was  thoroughly  con 
scious,  even  though  they  may  never  have  tried  to  for 
mulate  it  in  words.  I  mean  particularly  the  defining 
of  their  themes,  their  objectives.  Many  modern  novels 
of  the  better  class,  and  a  great  many  modern  poems, 
seem  to  me  awash  and  wallowing  like  derelicts  on  the 
high  seas.  They  are  successful  enough  in  this,  excel 
lent  in  that,  but  they  get  nowhere,  because  the  writers 
had  felt  the  emotion  that  made  them,  or  suffered  the 
experience,  but  never  defined  it  in  terms  of  all  emotion, 
all  experience,  never  considered  its  end.  The  three 
dots  ...  of  modern  literature  are  significant.  We 
break  off  our  efforts,  partly  no  doubt  because  we  seek 
effects  of  impressionism,  more  often  because  imagina 
tion  went  no  further.  Near  things  are  sharp  and  ex 
pressed  with  remarkable  vividness,  ultimate  objectives 
are  blurred,  which  is  to  say,  they  lack  definition. 

May  the  shades  of  Dr.  Johnson,  Charles  Lamb,  Em 
erson,  and  all  great  individualists  protect  us  from  bad 
definitions,  and  especially  from  rigid  or  formal  ones! 
Bad  definitions  destroy  themselves,  for  if  they  are 
thoroughly  bad  no  one  believes  them,  and  if  they  con 
tain  those  pleasing  half  truths  which  a  generation  loves 
to  suckle  upon,  why  then  after  their  vogue  they  will 
wither  into  nothingness.  Such  definitions  are  of  the 
letter,  and  die  by  it,  but  stiff,  clumsy  definitions  kill 
the  spirit.  To  define  a  great  man  by  a  rigid  formula  is 
to  sink  to  the  lowest  practice  of  the  worst  class  rooms. 
To  define  a  tendency  so  sharply  that  it  cannot  flow 


302  Conclusion 

without  breaking  the  definition,  is  a  lecturer's  trick 
for  which  audiences  should  stone  him.  Solemn  gen 
eralizations  which  squat  upon  a  book  like  an  ostrich  on 
a  goose  egg  and  hatch  out  vast  moral  philosophies  are 
to  be  dreaded  like  the  devil,  as  are,  equally,  the  critics 
with  pet  theories,  who,  having  defined  them,  make 
everything  from  a  squib  to  an  epic  fit  their  definition. 

Definitions  which  classify  without  margins  are  a 
special  evil:  the  division  into  literature  and  journalism 
for  example,  with  no  allowance  for  interlocking;  or  the 
confident  separation  of  all  books  into  categories  of  good 
or  bad.  Wholesale  definitions  are  also  objectionable, 
where  having  defined  a  poem  as  magazine  verse,  or  a 
collection  of  articles  as  a  magazine,  or  a  book  as  a  sex 
story,  or  a  man  as  a  journalist,  or  a  tendency  as  erratic 
or  erotic,  you  think  you  have  said  something.  May 
the  muse  of  clear  thinking,  and  the  little  humorous 
gods  who  keep  the  sense  of  proportion  balancing,  pro 
tect  us  from  these  also. 

It  occurs  to  me  that  I  have  made  but  a  lame  attempt 
to  define  definition.  This,  however,  is  as  it  should  be. 
For  definition,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  am  using  it,  like 
literature,  has  much  of  the  indefinable.  It  is  a  tool 
merely,  or  better  still,  because  broader,  a  device  by 
which  the  things  we  enjoy  and  that  profit  us  may  be 
placed  in  perspective,  ranged,  compared,  sorted,  and 
distinguished.  It  is  what  Arnold  meant  by  seeing 
steadily  and  seeing  whole.  It  is  the  scientist's  micro 
scope  that  defines  relationship,  and  equally  the  paint 
er's  brush  that  by  a  touch  reveals  the  hidden  shapes 


Defining  the  Indefinable  303 

of  nature  and  the  blend  of  colors.  It  is,  like  these  in 
struments,  a  means  and  hot  an  end.  May  pedants, 
scholiasters,  formalists,  and  dilettantes  take  to  heart 
this  final  description  of  literary  definition! 

Quite  unconsciously  for  the  most  part,  but  occasion 
ally  with  purpose  aforethought,  the  essays  in  this  book 
have  been  written  as  literary  definitions.  Its  unity  lies 
in  the  attempt,  which  at  least  has  been  sincere,  to 
grasp,  turn,  study  in  a  serious,  humorous,  ironical,  any 
thing  but  a  flippant  mood,  the  living  forms  of  literature 
as  they  have  risen  into  consciousness  and  challenged 
definition. 


THE   END 


RETURN  TO  D 


RROWED 


TH 


CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


JUN  1  6  1971  2  5 


LD  21-32m-3,'74 
(R7057slO)476 — A-32 


General  Library 
University  of  California 


LD  21A-50m-8,'61 
(Cl795slO)476B 


University  of  California 
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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


